


our imaginary monsters

by With_the_Wolves



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, The Power of Friendship Conquers All, Trauma, also sick bike tricks, just some regular monsters, no entities here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/With_the_Wolves/pseuds/With_the_Wolves
Summary: Jon, Sasha, and Tim have been best friends for three years, bound together inseparably by a game of their own invention. It's a game of nightmares, of darkness, of evil. They come up with scary stories about the creatures that lurk in the shadows, and then they launch epic attacks to purge those creatures from their town. It's fun. They're happy.But then the nightmares come to life.
Comments: 49
Kudos: 83





	1. early september memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello welcome to my 90s children's halloween movie. thank you for coming, i have many delights planned.
> 
> so this is the first fanfic i've written in like 8 years, and i'm super excited to be sharing my writing again! has my writing improved at all since i was twelve? no! but that's okay, we're all just learning~
> 
> also, please excuse the fact that this story doesn't take place in england. it takes place in, like, midwest america because i am american and this fic is secretly about My Childhood Specifically. also i didn't feel like researching all of the linguistic differences between english english and american english. i'm sorry for any inconvenience

Tim stands at the crest of the hill overlooking the elementary school, leaning over the handlebars of his bike as he watches the kids pouring out the front doors. He shivers slightly in the early September breeze, but he doesn’t let it distract him from his mission. It’s been two weeks since Sasha and he have seen Jon at the base, and they are starting to worry about him.  


Tim sits up straight as he sees Jon come out the doors. Jon moves through crowds as if he's swimming, ducking and weaving around everyone else, never letting himself be caught in one place. As Jon breaks from the crowd, Tim kicks off and races his bike across the grassy hill to intercept him, weaving through the playground before coming to a screeching halt in front of Jon. In his mind, Tim imagines himself turning his bike and leaning to the side, coming to a halt in a spray of dirt. In reality, he just slams suddenly on the brakes, nearly throwing himself over the handlebars and overshooting Jon by a couple of feet.

He turns around and waves, “Jon!”

Jon smiles and waves back, jogging over. Tim sits up straight and salutes him. Jon salutes back.

“Jon,” Tim says seriously, crossing his arms. “Have you been replaced by shadow people?”

“No. Have _you_ been replaced by shadow people?”

“No.”

They look at each other, both of them trying to keep a serious demeanor, neither quite managing to banish the smiles creeping onto their faces “Prove it,” they say at the same time, immediately launching into the secret handshake. By the time they finish, they’re both laughing.

“Where have you been?” Tim says. “Every day, Sasha and I sit around, hoping you’ll show up and tell us about whatever new creepo has moved in, but _no-o_ , you’re too busy for us.”

“You could always go out to the fields and fight the beast that lurks over there,” Jon says.

“Old news,” Tim says. “The field creature was scary last summer when you told us about it, but now it’s just boring." Not entirely true. Tim still has trouble sleeping some nights, thinking about flashing teeth and claws chasing them through the darkness. The stars were bright out in the fields, and the moon was big when the three of them had gone out there, armed with flashlights, planning to kill the creature that hunted there. It was meant to be a Unique Summer Adventure, but they didn't make it far before the shifting shadows and mysterious rustling noises had gotten to be too much for them. "Besides," Time continues. "It's not like anyone ever goes out there."  


"People go out there all the time."

“Jon,” Tim says. “Seriously. It’s been two weeks. What’s the deal?”

It’s just a split second when Jon’s smile falters, his eyes flicking away from Tim. Tim pretends not to notice. Just one moment, and then Jon is smiling again, with a new idea. “I’ve been dealing with dangers of my own,” he says.

Tim grins. “Hop on. He jerks his head to the back of his bike. “Sasha’s gonna want to hear all about it.”

***

The dry leaves crackle and break apart beneath the wheels of Tim’s bike. Tim loves the crunch, so he swerves his bike all over the street, aiming to crush each and every fallen leaf on the sidewalk. Jon clings to Tim’s shoulders, his feet planted firmly on the narrow pegs on the bike’s back wheel. Every sudden movement of the bike sends Jon’s heart into his throat as it threatens to shake him loose, but it’s more fun than it is terrifying.

Jon’s been riding on Tim’s bike like this for three years, and while he’s become rather proficient, it still isn’t an activity that he can simply relax into. He still has to focus on anticipating Tim’s movements and shifting his weight correctly to avoid being thrown from the bike. He isn’t a passive passenger, free to let his thoughts drift off where they may. He has to focus, and, for that, Jon is grateful. It's easier, this way, to avoid thinking of all the horrible things elementary school turns into when your only two friends graduate to middle school.

There’s a certain patch of uneven pavement between the school and the clubhouse that Tim has always seen as the perfect ramp to launch himself and his bike from the raised sidewalk to the road below. The first time he tried to make the jump with Jon on board, he hadn’t built up sufficient speed to carry them all the way to the road. The back wheel of the bike caught on the sidewalk, erasing their forward momentum and throwing both boys forward. They’d ended up tangled together on the ground, groaning, while Sasha watched, unimpressed, from her own bike.

In three years, they’ve more than figured out how to make the jump work. “Ready, Jon?” Tim asks, leaning down low over the handle bars as he pumps his legs faster and faster, building up speed. Jon follows him down, although he doesn’t have much choice in the matter—he can’t exactly let go of Tim’s shoulders. As the bike crests the concrete hill, they both throw their weight upwards. For a moment, they are weightless, invincible as only eleven-year old boys can imagine themselves to be. (Jon is technically only ten-and-three-quarters, but that’s technically closer to eleven than ten, so any rational system of rounding would name Jon eleven.)

Then the bike crashes to the ground, and the only reason Jon doesn’t slip off the bike entirely is that most of his weight is held on Tim’s back.

“Wooooh!” Tim yells as Jon carefully regains his footing on the bike pegs.

Then they are at the clubhouse. Sasha’s bike is already there, leaned carefully against the tree. Jon jumps clear of Tim’s bike as he slows, and Tim wastes no time letting his bike fall to the ground. Jon makes it to the ladder first and starts the ascent with Tim right behind him.

Sasha is sitting on a beanbag chair in the corner of the treehouse, reading. She looks up as Jon opens the trapdoor, and her face instantly breaks into a grin. “Jon!” she says, pulling him into a hug. As she releases him, she looks at him seriously. “Have you been replaced by shadow people?”

Jon shakes his head. “What about you?” He asks, and they repeat the ritual. Sasha is better at the handshake than Tim, snappier and more percussive. When they finish, Sasha looks at Jon and asks, “If you weren’t getting stolen by the shadow people, where have you been?" She cocks one eyebrow teasingly. "Are you too cool for us now?”

It's a joke, but Jon can see the concern in Sasha's eyes. It doesn't take a mind-reader to know she's thinking about how she and Tim found Jon in second grade—smaller than all of his classmates and hopelessly alone. She's wondering if fifth-grade Jon is faring any better, but they all know that Jon is still the smallest kid in his class and still the kind of annoying that makes him a target, and they could protect him from the worst of it when they were at school with him, but now he's all alone again. So Sasha is concerned, and Tim is concerned, and they both want Jon to tell them that of course everything is terrible because they both think that talking about it will somehow make it better. 

But Jon doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to talk about how his teachers refuse to help him because Jon should be old enough to solve conflicts on his own. He doesn't want to talk about how those words twisted in his mind, making him feel small and immature, making him worry that Sasha and Tim had somehow grown up without him and wouldn't want to be his friends anymore. They were in middle school now, and maybe the game they invented as third-graders just didn’t interest them any more. And maybe that was Jon’s fault, too. Maybe he’d ruined it, somehow.

But Sasha and Tim have never made Jon feel annoying or immature or like anything less than their absolute equal, and Jon doesn't want them to feel guilty just because he doubted them. They’re here now, and they’re his friends, and the bullying hurts a lot less because of that single, wondergul fact. So Jon doesn't tell them the real reason why he's stayed away for two weeks. Instead, he smiles, glances at Tim, and says, “I’ve been hunted by the darkest of forces.”

“What forces?” Sasha asks, sitting on the floor, ready to listen to Jon’s story. Tim sits next to her. This is the routine, how it’s always been since Jon was seven years old and making up stories about the nightmares that eight-year-old Tim and Sasha imagined in the darkness of their bedrooms. Jon tells the stories. Tim and Sasha sit and listen. And then they make a plan, for how to purge the monster from their little town.

“Wait!” Jon says, before launching into his story. He swings his backpack from his shoulders and sits cross-legged across from Tim and Sasha. He digs around in his bag for a few moments before pulling out a thick leather-bound book. “It’s a journal,” he says, showing them the blank pages inside. “I thought, maybe we could write down the stories? As, as a memento of all the creatures we’ve defeated.” As he says it, Jon starts to hesitate. This had seemed like such a good idea when he’d thought of it, but Sasha and Tim weren’t really interested in the stories, were they? They were more interested in what came after the stories, the skulking around town, the coming up with elaborate rituals, the heroics, the danger.

“That’s a great idea, Jon!” Sasha says, taking the book from him and turning it over in her hands. “It feels a little spooky already,” she smiles. “Where did you get it?”

“The antique shop,” Jon says, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It doesn’t quite work, and he can’t quite keep the pride from his voice, but that doesn’t stop Sasha and Tim from gaping at him.

“You faced Mr. Bouchard?” Tim asks. “All by yourself?”

Jon nods.

“He didn’t curse you for a thousand years for breathing too hard on his priceless merchandise?” Sasha asks.

“Nope,” Jon says. “Actually, he was surprisingly...nice.”

Tim laughs. “That man is not nice. He’s the closest thing this town has to real evil, and we of all people would know.”

Jon shrugs. “I don’t know. He's definitely weird, but maybe he’s just…shy.”

Tim laughs, disbelievingly.

“Anyway,” Sasha says, before the argument can proceed any further. She hands the book back to Jon and settles back onto the floor. “I want to hear a story. Jon, tell us what you’ve been up to for the past two weeks. Oh and do you need a pen?”

***

_ The principal of Memorial Elementary School is secretly a spider. _

_ Sure, he looks like a human. He speaks like a human. He acts like a human. _

_ But beneath his human skin, his human eyes, his human flesh, lurk the long, hairy legs of a spider. _

_ Sometimes, the spider wakes up in the morning, in his human house, in his human bed, and he is starving with a hunger that is nothing like human. He begins to construct his web, preparing for his next meal. _

_ He chooses his victims from the school. The children are so small, so trusting, so delicious. They leave nothing behind when they depart, no one to miss their absence, no one to wonder at a sudden change in their daily routine. He asks them to step into the backseat of his human car, and even though their mind might scream at them to run, the children can do nothing but follow the spider’s instructions. They step into the car peacefully. They peacefully follow him inside his house, peacefully ensnare themselves in his web. The emerging sight of his long legs, his eight eyes, his spidery fangs, might break them from their stupor enough to allow for a small scream. But it doesn’t matter to the spider. He seals their mouths with web before they can truly disturb his idyllic human neighborhood. _

_ The process of being liquefied within the web is slow, and as painful as being skinned alive. It is like burning, except happening deep inside your muscles as your bones reduce themselves to ash. Such is the fate of the spider’s victim, until their body is nothing but a thick sludge of soup that the spider slurps down, storing the leftovers in his human fridge. _

_ Such a crime should not go unnoticed, but it does. The victim dies, and and any memories of him along with him, as if he never even existed at all. _

***

When the story is finished, the game progresses as usual. They come up with a plan to deal with the threat, and then they run around following the plan until the early-evening sunset turns the sky golden.

They elect to kill the spider creature, so they take their bikes to Principal Smith’s house and spend a few minutes in quiet stakeout. However, it turns out that he has tiny spider minions whose venom causes ann yo e who gets bitten to pass out. The spider swarm takes them to the spider’s evil layer (a convenient hollow behind a bush in front of Sasha’s house), where they are tied up until the Spider can come deal with them. Luckily, Tim has brought along his trusty pocket knife and manages to cut himself free from the webs. Before he can help Sasha or Jon, though, the Spider returns and takes control of Tim’s mind.

That’s when Sasha’s mom comes outside to tell her that it’s time for dinner.

In the future, they’ll hold onto this moment as the last one when everything was truly okay. Jon’s crooked glasses and Sasha’s braces and Tim’s bowl cut, and the way they smiled as they said goodbye, in breathless anticipation of tomorrow’s adventures. If they could halt everything that came after, maybe they would. This could be childhood, for them. A game that felt spooky and dark, but that was safe, forever untouched by real trauma.

But they can’t stop what they have already set in motion.

The game is already over. Tomorrow, the stories become real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> most of the kids in town have had spectacularly negative experiences with elias bouchard, so roasting him is kind of a universal pasttime among the Youths. 
> 
> also, sasha regularly makes bets with tim that he won't be able to pull off certain stunts on his bike because she thinks its funny to watch him crash and burn. usually, she tries to discourage jon from being a passenger for these stunts because she doesn't think it's occurred to him that tim and her are both just stupid kids who often do incredibly dangerous, stupid things. in reality, jon is completely aware that their ideas might end up with one or all three of them in the hospital, but he's been ride-or-die since the moment he met them, so not throwing himself into danger alongside them has never been an option
> 
> thank for reading! <3


	2. something wicked this way comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon buys a journal, and things start to get a little weird.

**Last Week  
**  
Jon tells himself that he is not afraid of Elias Bouchard, but he knows it’s a lie. For all the horrors Jon invents every day, it is only Mr. Bouchard who makes his blood feel like ice, who makes him feel like a deer frozen in the path of an oncoming car. The games that Jon plays with Sasha and Tim are all made up, but Jon sincerely believes that Mr. Bouchard might truly be something other than fully human. There is something about him that _slithers_.  
  
Jon hesitates outside the door of the antique shop. All he needs is a blank notebook. It doesn’t have to be fancy. They could write the stories just as easily on loose notebook paper and bind the pages together themselves. That would be just as fun as putting the stories in an old leather-bound book, wouldn’t it?  
  
It was more than just the notebook, though. It was Sasha and Tim graduating to middle school and the creeping thought that they would leave Jon behind if he couldn’t find some way to show them he wasn’t just a little kid.  
  
So Jon steels himself and pushes open the heavy wooden door.  
  
Jon had been inside the antique shop a few times before, usually with his gran, once with Sasha and Tim. He is prepared for the sudden darkness of the shop, and he knows where amongst all the clutter the front desk is located. He knows where to look to meet Mr. Bouchard’s watchful eyes that have already settled firmly on Jon.  
  
“Jonathan Sims,” Mr. Bouchard says. “How can I help you?”  
  
Jon suppresses a sudden shiver. It isn’t strange that Mr. Bouchard knows his name. It _isn’t_. “I need, um—I’m looking for a journal,” Jon says, trying to sound confident. Trying not to sound like a rabbit in a foxhole, although he feels like nothing so much as prey. He swallows. “Something to write in, anyway,” he finishes awkwardly.  
  
“This is hardly a school supplies shop,” Mr. Bouchard intones.  
  
“No, not—It should be old.”  
  
“I see,” Mr. Bouchard says. He is silent for a moment. ”Bit of an odd request. What do you need to write down?”  
  
“Ghost stories.” The words slip out of Jon’s mouth before he can truly think about them. Was it a bad idea to tell that to Mr. Bouchard? Jon wasn’t sure.  
  
Mr. Bouchard smiles and leans forward, resting his elbows on the front desk. “Ghost stories,” he echoes. “Of course.” He hums softly, tapping one of his fingernails against the dark wood. “I don’t suppose you have time to tell me one?”  
  
“What?” Jon asks, his voice more hostile than it has any reason to be. It was just an innocuous question, but it made something in Jon raise its hackles. The stories are _his_.  
  
“Do you have any stories about this shop?” Mr. Bouchard asks. “It does get a little boring around here, and it would be nice to have some bit of… _imagination_ to occupy my thoughts.”  
  
Jon can think of four stories about the shop, and seven about Mr. Bouchard, but he isn’t going to just give them away. “I’m sorry,” Jon stammers. “I—need to meet my friends soon.” A lie. He hasn’t seen Tim and Sasha in more than a week, but Mr. Bouchard doesn’t know that. Jon hopes Mr. Bouchard doesn’t know that.  
  
“I understand,” Mr. Bouchard says. “Young boys are so busy. I have just the thing for you, though. Come with me.”  
  
Fighting an increasing sense of _get out Get Out GET OUT_ , Jon follows Mr. Bouchard deeper into the shop. They come to a sparsely populated bookshelf against the back wall, and Mr. Bouchard pulls from it a thick, leather-bound book. The cover is an intense swirling pattern, nearly hypnotizing to look at. He hands it to Jon. “Seems perfect for your needs, don’t you think?”  
  
Jon finds himself nodding. It is perfect. Dark and spooky, just the right weight to hold his stories. “How much?” he asks, fearing that any answer Mr. Bouchard gave would be much, much higher than the $15 Jon has in his pocket.  
  
“No charge,” Mr. Bouchard says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s a gift. For years now, that book has been doing nothing but collecting dust in this shop. It should have its chance to be useful, don’t you think?”  
  
“I guess,” Jon said. “But—”  
  
Mr. Bouchard doesn’t give him a chance to protest. He says something about business to attend to and glides away, leaving Jon to find his own way out.  
  
It’s weird. Part of Jon feels like he should put the book down and pretend he never entered the shop in the first place, but he ignores the feeling. The book is perfect, and if he leaves it behind, then this entire ordeal was pointless. He tucks the book under his arm and retraces a path through the gloomy shop, trying to ignore the feeling that something is watching him, stalking him. He wants to run, but he can imagine all too well hot breath on the back of his neck, chasing him down. He forces himself to keep his pace steady.  
  
The fresh air of the outside world is a relief, and Jon breathes it in, leaning back against the big wooden door. Already, the sense of wrongness is beginning to fade. Already, Jon is pretty certain it’d all been in his head. Sure, it had been a little weird. But that wasn’t unexpected—Mr. Bouchard was known for being weird. In a way, it would have been weirder if they’d had a perfectly normal interaction. Besides, Mr. Bouchard had given Jon this beautiful book for free. Obviously, he couldn’t be an entirely bad person.  
  
***  
  
**Present  
**  
The school day crawls by incredibly slowly. Sasha and Tim don’t see each other often during the day, but between every passing period, Tim leaves a hand-drawn picture of a spider in Sasha’s locker. They become increasingly humanoid and horrifyingly detailed as the day goes on, and they make Sasha smile.|  
  
When they are finally dismissed at the end of the day, Sasha immediately finds Tim outside at the bike rack. “We should both go pick up Jon today.”  
  
“You think? I was going to ask you to go get him.” Tim smiles. “I’ve got terrors to prepare,” he says, wiggling his fingers at her in what is clearly meant to be a creepy manner. Sasha can’t help but laugh.  
  
She quickly sobers, though. “I think we should both go. I’m worried about him. You know as well as I do that we’re his only friends, and now we go to an entirely different school, and he’s all alone. I’d like to make sure that everything is okay there.”  
  
“Of course it’s not okay there, Sasha,” Tim says lightly. “I mean, the principal is a spider that eats kids.”  
  
Sasha quirks an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “I’m serious.”  
  
“I’m serious too,” Tim says, pulling his bike from the rack. “I’m sure the other kids are as mean to Jon as they ever were, but it’s clearly not something he wants to talk about.”  
  
Sasha grabs her bike as well and begins to walk alongside Tim. “I don’t mean we should try to force him to talk to us. I just think it would be nice to reassure him that we’re both still here for him, you know? Just because we go to different schools now, we’re still as tight a trio as ever.”  
  
Tim gets on his bike as he thinks about it. “Okay, I think you’re right. It would be good for both of us to go.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re finally on board,” Sasha says dryly, but before she can finish her sentence, Tim has zoomed off.  
  
“Last one there’s a rotten avocado!” Tim yells as he leaves Sasha behind.  
  
“That’s not fair,” Sasha says, jumping on her own bike and speeding after him.  
  
***  
  
One thing Jon knows for sure: He is _not_ following Martin Blackwood because he feels guilty about getting him sent to the principal’s office. That wasn’t his fault. He’d told Martin enough times that getting himself involved in Jon’s problems would only bring trouble down on his own head. It wasn’t his fault that Martin hadn’t listened. Jon hadn’t even needed Martin’s help; Mike messed with Jon all the time, and he hadn't even hurt him that badly.  
  
There _was_ something satisfying in watching Mike run away crying, in seeing the bruise around his eye darkening in color as the day went on. It was even more satisfying when Martin helped him to his feet, looked at him with actual concern and asked, “Are you alright?”  
  
Jon wishes he hadn’t pulled himself away from Martin with a harsh, “I’m fine.” He wishes he’d said, “Thank you,” instead of “You really shouldn’t have done that.”  
  
It was for the best, though. Martin is new. He doesn’t understand, yet, that Jon is the last person he should want to be friends with. Martin might be a little quiet, but he could easily fit in with the other kids here, if he’d stop giving himself a bad reputation by constantly trying to rescue Jon. Whether or not Jon was mean to him, Martin eventually would have realized what everyone else had. Better it happen now, while Martin still has a chance to make other friends.  
  
So Jon is definitely not following Martin in hopes of apologizing. He’s following him because he’s been to speak to Principal Smith, the same Principal Smith that Jon and Sasha and Tim had just yesterday identified as an Evil Spider Creature. Sasha and Tim will want a report on Martin’s behavior. They’ll want to know if he seemed dazed at all after talking to the principal, if he’d been mind controlled. Jon’s the only one around to gather this information. He has to do it.  
  
When they are dismissed from class at the end of the day, Martin heads towards the parking lot. Jon expects to watch him get on one of the buses, or maybe wave to a parent who has come to pick him up.  
  
Instead, he walks directly towards Principal Smith, who is packing his briefcase into his car.  
  
For a moment, Jon just freezes. The he shakes his head, laughing at himself a little bit. There’s a reason this is happening, something that makes much more sense than the ridiculous explanation that’s made Jon’s breath catch in his chest. Principal Smith isn’t actually a spider. That was a story that Jon _made up_.  
  
Jon realizes that he’s obviously staring and ducks behind a nearby bush, continuing to watch. Martin probably has something to tell the principal, about…something. Obviously, Jon doesn’t know what the mundane explanation for this is, but he’s already formulating a story about mind control to tell Sasha and Tim.   
  
Martin gets into the car without so much as looking at the principal.  
  
Jon blinks, and all at once his body goes cold. He watches Principal Smith finish packing up his car without even glancing at Martin. As far as Jon can tell, they don’t say anything to each other at all.  
  
Principal Smith starts his car, and Jon doesn’t let himself think of flesh dissolving into spider food. (He thinks of flesh dissolving into spider food.) He looks around. Surely someone is going to stop this? Someone is going to step in, ask why Martin is in Principal Smith’s car instead of on his way home. But no, of course not. Jon’s the only one who feels this overwhelming sense of wrongness. Jon’s the only one who knows about the spider, but he doesn’t know what to do, and the car is _leaving_ —  
  
Sasha and Tim are here.  
  
They are walking their bikes over to him, and they smile and wave when they see him. It isn’t quite relief that he feels—he’s far too panicked for a word like _relief_ —but he isn’t on his own anymore.   
  
He rushes over to them. “We have to go to Principal Smith’s house, _now_.”  
  
They blink at him. “What?” Sasha says. “Why? We—”  
  
“There isn’t time,” Jon says, and his voice is shaking. “We have to hurry. Please.”  
  
Maybe they think this is still some part of the game, or maybe they recognize the panicked sincerity in his voice, but either way, they get on their bikes. Jon jumps on the back of Tim’s bike, and they are off. “As fast as you can,” Jon says, and Tim nods, picking up the pace.  
  
On their bikes, they don’t have to contend with traffic, and they can take every little shortcut they know through narrow alleys and backyards with broken fences. They make it to Principal Smith’s house ahead of his car, and Jon refuses to let himself think that maybe, maybe the spider doesn’t eat children inside its house. Maybe it takes them somewhere else, somewhere lonely, far away from civilization, where it knows its meal won’t be interrupted.  
  
“Jon,” Tim begins, breathing heavily from half a mile of fast pedaling. “What is going on?”  
  
Jon takes a deep breath and steps off the bike, forcing himself to calm down. “Maybe nothing,” he says.  
  
Tim lets out a disbelieving laugh, throwing his head back. “ _Nothing?_ Jon, my lungs are dying. You made it seem like something seriously bad was going on.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Jon says, looking at Principal Smith’s house. It’s just a house. Just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill house, in an ordinary, run-of-the-mill neighborhood. It’s not the kind of place where a kid could get eaten by a spider monster. The very idea sounds absurd.  
  
But he thinks about Martin getting into the backseat of that car, thinks about the eerie silence. “We need to hide,” Jon says. “Somewhere we can see the house.”  
  
“Jon, is this just part of the game?” Sasha says. “You really worried us, and that’s not cool.”  
  
“No, I—” Jon stops. How can he possibly say, ‘I think my story is actually happening?’ without sounding like a scared little kid jumping at shadows?  
  
Sasha puts a hand on his wrist, and suddenly Jon is aware of just how much he’s shaking. “You’re really scared,” she says, half-questioning.  
  
Jon nods. “I don’t know, though. It might be—I just don’t know.”  
  
“Okay,” Sasha says softly, and she wheels her bike to the corner of the street, where she hides it behind a large bush. “Tim,” she says, jerking her head towards it, and Tim also deposits his bike. “As for our stakeout spot…” She looks critically around the street. There are distressingly few convenient hiding places in plain view of the house.  
  
“What about that tree?” Tim says, pointing to a large oak across the street.  
  
“What, hide behind it?” Sasha asks skeptically.  
  
“No!” Tim says. “We could climb it. The leaves will hide us from anyone who isn’t actively looking for us, and we should have a decent view of the house. Unless either of you has a better idea?”  
  
They don’t. Tim gives Jon and Sasha a lift to the nearest branch, and they pull him up after them. They almost fall several times, and through the whole process, Jon is petrified that Principal Smith’s car will come rolling down the street at any moment.  
  
“So can you tell us what’s going on now?” Tim asks. He’s climbed to a higher branch and is dangling his shoe in Sasha’s face.  
  
Jon takes a breath. He hasn’t thought of a way to make it sound less far-fetched and stupid, but they deserve to know. He starts to tell them—  
  
“Shh,” Sasha puts her hand over his mouth. “There he is!”  
  
The old station wagon rumbles down the street. It, too, appears shockingly normal as it turns into Principal Smith’s driveway. The principal gets out of his car, looking as normal as he ever had. He begins walking towards his house, and Jon hears Tim opens his mouth to say something.  
  
Then Martin gets out of the car and blankly follows Principal Smith into the house.  
  
Silence. Then—  
  
“What the _hell_?” Tim says softly.  
  
“Does Principal Smith have a son? Or a nephew?” Sasha’s voice is calm and rational, but it’s clear she is shaken.  
  
“Martin is new in school,” Jon says. “I don’t think they’re related. But maybe—”  
  
“Maybe they’re going to have a parent-teacher conference,” Tim says. “Maybe Martin’s parents are on their way right now. Or maybe there’s some kind of emergency. Maybe his parents _died_ , and Principal Smith brought him here so he wouldn’t have to go home and see the bodies.”  
  
“That would make sense,” Sasha says, even though they all know that would make no sense _at all_.  
  
“They didn’t say anything to each other,” Jon said. “It was like that at school, too. Like Martin had been…” He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to make it more true by speaking it aloud.  
  
“Like he’d been mind controlled,” Sasha finishes.  
  
“Okay, but that’s impossible!” Tim says. “We made that story up. It isn’t real. None of it is real!”  
  
“Principal Smith is _not_ a spider creature,” Sasha says. “We’ve all been students at his school, and we can all say with definite fact that he is not a spider creature, right?”  
  
“He could have mind-controlled us to forget,” Jon says quietly.  
  
“But it’s our story!” Tim says. “We made it up! It isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.”  
  
They are all talking too fast, getting louder, more frantic, more desperate.  
  
And then they hear the scream. It’s short, immediately and unnaturally cut off. Their hearts sink as undeniable certainty settles in their stomachs. They look at each other with wide, panicked eyes.  
  
“Oh my god,” Sasha says. “This is actually happening.”


	3. mr. spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rescue mission is carried out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so betta fish have a reputation for being very low-maintenance pets, and that's bullshit. this past weekend, my betta fish, Jonathan Swims, threw a huge temper tantrum because he suddenly decided that he HATES the snail who had, until this point, been peacefully sharing a tank with him. for FOUR DAYS, he spent almost all of his waking hours flaring up as big as he could possibly make himself and swimming around her, doing his absolute best to be Scary and Intimidating and Drive Her Out of His Territory. eventually, he even started physically bullying her, knocking her off of walls and plants and whatever. it was //highly// stressful to watch.  
> which is why I got to spend a large chunk of yesterday setting up a brand new aquarium for one (1) snail, instead of finishing and posting this chapter. i love Jonathan Swims so much, he is my baby, and whenever I open up the tank, he swims right to the top and looks at me, and he follows my finger around, and one time i got him to jump out of the water and grab a fish food pellet from my hand. but also. he just doubled the amount of work i have to put into aquarium maintenance for literally no reason. and i am a little bit peeved at him.
> 
> also, much love to @GloriousGarbage for reading over this chapter for me and encouraging me to post it!

If this were a game, they wouldn’t hesitate. They would charge into the house and save Martin, no matter the danger.

Of course, if this were a game, there wouldn’t actually be any danger. They wouldn’t be so deep into terror that they could hardly feel anything at all, eyes wide and glassy and staring at each other, no one daring to say anything to acknowledge the reality of the horrible situation they’d fallen into.

If they were a few years older, things would be different. Deep inside, they each know that the game doesn’t have a lot of time left. Already, they are eleven. Soon, they will be twelve, thirteen, and their lives will no longer be dedicated to games of pretend, so they cling to the game while they still have it, and in doing so, they cling to bravery, to fearlessness, and to trust that the three of them will always, always be friends. 

If they were a few years older, the game would be a nostalgic memory, and they would no longer feel the need to cling. They would doubt themselves more and trust themselves less. They would question the existence of the spider, and they would question their own abilities to face it. They would call for help that would arrive far too late, if it came at all. They would run away and pretend that they hadn’t seen anything.

But they are eleven, on the cusp of something terrifying and unknown, and even though they are deeply afraid, they decide to save Martin.

***

It doesn’t take long to find an unlocked side window, which they shimmy open with practiced ease. (Jon’s bedroom is on the second floor, with a window that looks out to an oak tree with lots of branches for climbing. The three had long since perfected the art of crawling into Jon’s room through that window, quietly enough that Jon’s gran never found out what they were doing.)

Sasha and Tim don’t want to use Jon as the distraction, but there is no better option. Of the three of them, Jon is the only one who is still Principal Smith’s student, and even though he’s the worst liar Of the three, he is also the best at making up stories on the spot. Ultimately, it’s less important that Principal Smith believes anything Jon says than that Jon can keep him listening long enough for Sasha and Tim to enter the house, grab Martin, and get out.

Before they split up, Sasha pulls Jon into a hug. “Stay safe,” she whispers, and Jon can hear her heartbeat, fast and loud. After a moment, Tim joins in, wrapping his arms around both of them.

But there isn’t time. Principal Smith could already be making a meal out of Martin. Jon pulls away, “Good luck,” he says, and then he creeps around to the front of the house and approaches the front door. He doesn’t think about impossibly long spider legs or eight blinking eyes or hordes of tiny spider minions swarming around Tim and Sasha. He just puts his finger on the doorbell and holds it there for several seconds. He can hear the tone from outside the door, and it’s deeply annoying. He can only hope that it’s annoying enough to force Principal Smith to take a break from his feast.

Jon hears footsteps inside, approaching the door. His heart starts to pound faster as he imagines a creature with eight legs and Principal Smith’s face swinging the door open. He could devour Jon in seconds, or drag him into the house for a second course.

Jon swallows hard and plants his feet. If Jon fails, they all fail. He has to stay strong.

The door swings slowly open, and Principal Smith has two legs and two arms that he crosses across his chest as he frowns at Jon. “Jonathan Sims? What are you doing here?”

***

As soon as Sasha and Tim hear the door open, they are off. Tim hauls himself through the window first, and Sasha follows. Conveniently, the window is located above a bed, so it’s fairly easy to make a quiet entrance.

There is something inherently terrifying about stepping foot in a place that doesn’t want you there, even somewhere as innocuous as a rarely-used guest room. Sasha’s heart immediately starts beating faster, and she reaches out to squeeze Tim’s hand. He squeezes back, and Sasha thinks she can feel his heartbeat in his palm, but maybe that’s just her own heartbeat threatening to escape her body.

There isn’t time to dwell on how scared they are, no time to prepare for whatever lies ahead. It takes just a moment to determine that Martin isn’t being held captive in this room, so Sasha and Tim move to the door and step out into the hall.

Luckily, Principal Smith does not live in a particularly large house. It’s only a single story, and when they open the door, they find a hallway with four more doors, leading to the living area. They move in order, down the hallway, each doorway bringing them closer to the entryway, closer to the spider creature. The first leads to a bathroom, then a small office, then a storage closet. Behind the fourth doorway, just as Sasha is fighting back a rising tide of panic at the thought of having to venture out into the open living space, where Principal Smith could at any moment turn around and see her, they find Martin.

At first, Sasha doesn’t see him. She’s too busy looking around the rest of the room with mounting horror. What was clearly once a normal master bedroom is covered, absolutely covered, in thick spiderwebs. They frame every surface, they hang from every corner, they fill every patch of air. Sasha has never been claustrophobic before, but in this room Sasha gets the distinct feeling that there isn’t enough room to breathe.

Tim elbows her and points, and Sasha freezes. Against a nearby wall, Martin is suspended in a cocoon of web. He is clearly trying to thrash around, but he can hardly move.

Sasha and Tim make their way over, knocking down webs as they go. Martin looks at them with absolute panic in his eyes, but his mouth is covered in webs that stifle any questions he might ask.

Sasha does her best to calm him down. “It’s okay,” she says softly, as if she were talking to a scared puppy. “We’re friends. We’re here to help you, okay? We’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry.”

They try to pull him down from the wall, but the webs are stronger than they look, and they don’t budge. Sasha looks at Tim. “Do you think you can cut him down with your pocket knife?” she asks.

“If I had it with me.”

“You don’t have it with you?” she whispers, and her words sound harsher than she wants them to, but she’s so scared and stressed and how much longer can Jon realistically distract Principal Smith?

“I can’t exactly bring it with me to school,” Tim says. “But there’s got to be a knife, or a pair of scissors, or—something around here, right?”

Sasha nods, then nods again. And then one more time. There’s one place where Sasha definitely knows she’ll find a knife, but Tim won’t like it. Tim would insist on coming with her. “Go check the study for scissors,” she says. “I’ll stay here with Martin.”

Tim nods, and goes back out into the hallway. Sasha gives him one second, then leaves on her own mission, to the kitchen on the other side of the wide-open living area.

Sasha’s footsteps are light. She knows how to tread across surfaces without being heard, without being detected. They practiced sneaking all the time as part of the game, and she tells herself that this is no different.

She doesn’t creep across the open section of Principal Smith’s living space, doesn’t hunch over or do anything else that she might imagine would make her harder to spot. Nor does she waste time turning to look at Principal Smith. She just moves, as silent and as quickly as possible. She just trusts in Jon’s distraction, trusts that he will do everything he can to keep her safe.

She has just ducked behind the cabinets of the kitchen when she hears Principal Smith start to make excuses, start to turn away from Jon. She closes her eyes, whispering a silent prayer because that’s what people do in movies when they’re scared and in trouble. She hears Jon’s hand smacking against the door, hears him shout “Wait!” And then he keeps talking, and there is no time for Sasha to be proud of him, or to worry about him, or to even think about him at all. She starts opening drawers until she finds the utensils, and she grabs the largest knife she can find.

There’s no time to dwell on this victory, either. She simply walks back across the open space, quietly and quickly, and she prays that Principal Smith won’t turn around.

She gets back to the web room, and Tim is already there, doing his best to cut through the webs with a pair of scissors. He looks up, panicked, when she walks in, but his eyes widen in relief as he recognizes her. She walks over, holding up her knife in explanation of her absence.

Cutting through the webs only takes ten seconds or so, but it feels like an eternity, an eternity during which Jon could at any moment lose his hold on the principal. At any moment, the door could open once again, and they could be joined by a monster.

The door, miraculously, stays closed. And then Martin is free, and Sasha and Tim have to rush to keep him from falling to the ground. He’s still covered in webs, and he is trembling, and he looks like he might collapse at any moment if they don’t keep him moving, so Sasha grabs his arm and pulls him out of the room and down the hallway. They go back into the original guest bedroom, and Tim grabs Martin and tosses him to the ground below before jumping out after him. Sasha follows, and they help Martin to his feet, and they are out. They’ve escaped.

Almost.

Sasha takes Martin’s hand. “Go get Jon,” she tells Tim, struggling to keep her voice even. “We’ll stay here, and when Principal Smith closes the door, we’ll all break for the bikes. We’ll probably only have a few seconds before the spider discovers that its meal is missing, so—We have to be fast, okay? As fast as we possibly can be.”

Tim nods. “Let’s do it.”

***

Jon isn’t a very convincing distraction, but he does as well as any eleven-year-old could be expected to, given the circumstances. Sure, nothing he says makes any sense—he rambles about reading comprehension and the importance of library cats and the fact that lots of playground equipment is actually very dangerous, isn’t it?—but every time Principal Smith threatens to turn away and close the door, Jon leans forward and keeps the door open.

He doesn’t even allow his voice to shake when he sees Sasha walk through the living room. He maintains eye contact. He doesn’t break.

Eventually, though, Principal Smith gets tired of the game. Something shifts, and Jon can see it in the way he looks at him, his eyes suddenly going hungry. “Jonathan,” Principal Smith says. “If that will quite be all, I really need to get back to some urgent business of my own.”

It’s a warning. Jon is smart enough to pick up on that. But Sasha and Tim are still inside, so Jon’s distraction can’t end yet. “That’s  _ not _ all,” he says. “I also want to talk about how much stress our teachers have to deal with on a daily basis.”

Principal Smith nods, as if he expected as much. “Why don’t you come inside, then?”

Jon had some inkling that being aware of the mind control might make him immune to it, but he was wrong. At Principal Smith’s words, Jon feels suddenly numb, unable to do or think of anything other than following Principal Smith into the house.

No, that’s not quite right. On the surface, he feels numb, but every other layer of his mind is just as panicked as before, screaming at him to stop, screaming at him to not entrap himself in the web. He’s going to be eaten. There’s no way to escape.

Then he feels a heavy hand squeezing shoulder, anchoring him in place. “Hi Principal Smith,” Tim says cheerfully. “I’m sorry about Jon here. He’s trying to learn how to become more comfortable talking to strangers, so we’ve been sending him around to lots of people’s houses, just to-chat. Sometimes he gets a little carried away.”

“I see,” Principal Smith says.

“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Tim says, beginning to walk away from the door, half-dragging Jon with him. “Have a good day!”

“You boys as well,” Principal Smith says.

Then he closes the door, and Tim breaks into a mad dash, pushing Jon in front of him. “Go, go, go,” he says. They reach the bushes where they hid the bikes and Tim shouts at Jon to grab Sasha’s. He does, just in time for Sasha to run up behind him and grab the handlebars. “With me, Jon,” she says, so he grabs her shoulders and jumps up behind her. His feet aren’t quite steady on the pegs of her bike before Sasha takes off, fast. Tim is a second behind them, with Martin’s arms clinging tightly around his neck.

They ride at breakneck speed, and when they finally arrive at the treehouse, they scramble up the ladder as quickly as they possibly can. Tim is last up, and he closes the trapdoor behind them, latching it closed. He pulls out one of their many boxes of miscellaneous tools and digs around until he finds a lock, which he closes over the latch. He does the same with the treehouse’s two windows, leaving them with only the dim light of their three battery-powered lamps.

This done, the four collapse into the farthest corner of the treehouse. They are all four panting with exhaustion and fear. Three of them are covered with spiderwebs, especially Martin, whose hair is so thick with them it looks white. They huddle as close to each other as they possibly can, not one of them willing to be even the slightest bit alone.

***

For a long time, no one says anything. In their games, whenever they successfully defeated evil and escaped from danger, there was lots of laughter and shouting. But this wasn’t a game, and they hadn’t defeated anything. They just sit, silent. Jon has one arm around Martin’s shaking shoulder, and he can feel Sasha’s cheekbones pressing into his knuckles as she leans her head against Martin. Tim is sitting behind them, one hand clasped tight around Jon’s shoulder and another hand on Sasha’s head, buried in her hair. Jon is leaning back against his chest, and he can feel every shuddering breath Tim takes.

Finally, Tim shifts slightly and loosens his grip on Jon’s shoulder. “That sure was something.”

Sasha lets out a long, shaky breath. “It sure was.”

“It sure was,” Jon whispers, and it is as if something has been unstoppered inside of him. It had almost got him. If Sasha and Tim had taken just a minute longer—he thinks about his insides being stored in a jar in a spider’s refrigerator. He’d meant it as a joke, when he’d written it down. Now, it makes a stone form in his stomach so suddenly he feels like he might throw up, and then there are tears in his eyes and he can’t breathe except in sobs.

He turns to Tim and buries his face in his shirt. In three years, Jon had never allowed himself to be anything other than a contemporary of Sasha and Tim. Maybe he was a year younger, but he wasn’t their little brother. He didn’t need them to look up to, and he didn’t need them to protect him. Now, he is grateful for being smaller, grateful for the hand that Tim releases from Sasha and wraps around Jon, hugging him close. He is grateful to pretend that Tim can protect him.

He feels Sasha’s hand card gently through his hair, and then she says, “Oh my god, Martin. Your mouth is still—Hold on, I’ll help you. Tim, where’s your pocket knife?”

One of Tim’s arms briefly lifts from around Jon as he points.

“Got it,” Sasha says. Her voice is a little too fast and a little too high-pitched, a parody of the confidence she is trying so hard to emulate. “Okay, Martin—Don’t look at me like that, I’m not going to hurt you. Just hold still.”

There is a moment of silence. Then—

“ _ Ow! _ ”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to—I just—” Sasha’s words break down as she speaks, and then she is crying, too.

“No, it’s okay,” Martin says. “It’s just a tiny cut. Just a little bit of blood. It’s fine. I’m _fine_.” Martin’s voice cracks on the last word.

Tim lets out a dry laugh. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?” His voice is shaking too. “It was just one spider monster. It didn’t even eat anyone. We didn’t even see it, really.”

“I saw it,” Martin says quietly. “It was—horrible.”

They stop talking. Instead, they pile on the floor and focus on each other’s breathing, each other’s heartbeats, each other’s warmth. In the dim light of the tree house, time ceases to exist, and they lay there for what could be hours, pointedly not thinking about a spider creature. Pointedly not talking.

Soon, they will talk. They will talk about the game, and they will talk about the book. They will talk about the spider and ways that they might stop it from trying to eat anyone else. They will talk about Elias Bouchard, and they will make a plan for confronting him.

But right now, they are eleven years old, and they are terrified, and they cling to each other as tightly as they possibly can.

Eventually, exhaustion takes them, and they sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i made you guys think martin was dead in the last chapter. i originally planned for chapter 2 to also contain everything in this chapter (plus a bit of the next chapter), but then there were so many more words than i expected, so i sliced it in half, and it didn't even occur to me that cutting off the chapter there might look like i'd just. killed him.
> 
> as always, thanks so much for reading. if all goes well, the next chapter should be up by saturday~


	4. book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questions are asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi friends!
> 
> writing this chapter almost killed me! yayyyyyyyy

Martin wakes up, and he is already thinking about webs and fangs and hairy legs brushing against him. He curls up against the wood floor of the treehouse and shuts his eyes tight, trying to force the spider away, but nothing he does can keep his mind from dwelling on its eight horrible, gleaming eyes.  
  
Martin looks at the others, curled up together in a comfortable pile, and for a moment he feels unbearably, impossibly lonely. He should have expected that Jon had friends outside of school. Jon had told him as much, hadn’t he? Martin just hadn’t believed him because—Well. Everything about Jon, from his small size to the way he curled up with a book during every second of free time, identified him as an outcast. Someone just as desperate for friends as Martin.  
  
Martin still feels guilty for those wild thoughts upon seeing Jon all alone in the cafeteria on the first day of school. He’d never had a best friend before, and he’d felt a thrill of joy that maybe now he would. Martin wouldn’t have to spend the entire school year being the new kid. All he had to do was stick himself to Jon’s side, and he wouldn’t be alone.  
  
He is alone, though, isn’t he? Even now, having experienced actual terror with these kids, he doesn't really belong with them. He wasn’t part of the rescue mission; he was just the victim.  
  
Unbidden, he thinks of Jon’s words from earlier in the day, before the terror began. He’d found Jon being menaced by a bully, backed against a wall, face contorted in pain. The bully had a fistful of Jon’s hair, and was using it to lift him off the ground. Jon was on his tiptoes, supporting himself as much as he could, but Martin could see that it wasn’t helping much.  
  
Martin didn’t think. He just grabbed the kid’s shoulder, jerked him away from Jon, and punched him in the face. Obviously, the kid hadn’t been prepared for a real fight, as he’d immediately run off.  
  
Martin had turned around to see if Jon was okay, only to find harsh, glaring eyes. “Why did you do that?” Jon had demanded.  
  
“I—What? He was hurting you.”  
  
“Who cares?” Jon said. His hair was a mess, and his glasses were crooked on his face. Bent frames. “I don’t need your help,” he snapped, as he picked up his books which were in a pile on the ground. “And I don’t need a friend, so just…leave me alone.”  
  
It had hurt, but not as much as his and Mike Crew’s meeting with the principal. Martin had tried to explain that Mike had been bullying Jon and had deserved the black eye, but Mike had the apparently airtight defense, “That isn’t true.” Eventually, Mike had been dismissed and Martin had stayed behind.   
  
Martin’s memories are a fuzzy after that. Really, now is the first time Martin’s head has been totally clear all afternoon, unclouded by spider mind control powers. He wonders how much of Jon’s harsh words he’d actually meant, and how much of it was just—him being Jon. Looking at Jon’s two friends, how close they all are, it seems that he’d meant all of it.  
  
“Martin?” Jon whispers, sitting up, and Martin suddenyl realizes that he has very obviously been staring at Jon while he sleeps.  
  
“Uh, hi,” he says, turning his head away, trying to make it seem like it had just been casual staring, instead of creepy staring.  
  
Jon is silent for a moment. Martin half expects him to tell him to leave. Instead, Jon stands up and comes to sit next to Martin, so close that their shoulders touch. Jon lets out a breath and relaxes against Martin, leaning his head against Martin’s shoulder. Martin’s mind goes blank for a moment as he processes what’s happening. He forces himself to relax against Jon, as much as he can.  
  
“How’s it going?” Jon asks, after a moment. The words don’t come out like a question. His voice is flat, distant, like his only reason for speaking is to break the silence.  
  
Martin laughs a little, anyway, at the ridiculousness of the question. “I’ve been better.”  
  
Jon lets out his own huff of laughter at that. “Me too,” he says.  
  
They are silent again, for a few long moments. “Thank you,” Martin says finally. “For—rescuing me.” He wants to tell Jon about the deep hopelessness he’d felt, his certainty that no one would come for him, the sure expectation of his own death. He wants to tell Jon that he thought he hallucinated the others, when they first appeared. He wants to tell Jon about the unbearable feeling of webs sticking to his skin. But he knows he won’t be able to talk about any of that without crying, so he just leaves it.  
  
Jon just shrugs in response, “You would have rescued me.”  
  
Would he have? Martin isn’t certain. He doesn’t know how Jon and his friends found out about the spider, but they clearly knew what they were dealing with when they entered the house. Martin doesn’t know if he would have been brave enough for that. He opens his mouth to say as much, but then Jon, staring at the floor, says:  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“What?”  
“I’m sorry,” Jon repeats.  
  
“Why would you be sorry?” Martin asks. “You saved me!”  
  
“Not about that—” Jon says. “I’m sorry about the things I said to you. Earlier. Before the—Anyway. You helped me, and I should have thanked you.” Jon stops. “I just wanted to protect you, I guess. From everyone thinking that you were a freak or something because you were friends with me.”  
  
Martin tilts his head to the side. Jon said it so matter-of-factly, without even a hint of distress. He smiles as he says it, like he’s joking, but he isn’t it, and that makes Martin’s heart break a little bit.  
  
“Of course,” Jon continues. “Now you’re pretty much stuck with us, so get used to it, I guess.”  
  
Jon delivers the sentence dryly, without much warmth, but it makes something in Martin’s heart do a flip of joy anyway. He was stuck with them. Jon had said it.   
  
It was almost enough for Martin to think he was lucky to run into the spider.  
  
***  
  
When Sasha opens her eyes, she hears Jon whispering stories to Martin. She feels like any kind of scary story should be too much for her right now, but in reality, hearing the old stories is almost comforting. It’s nice, remembering stories that don’t come to life and try to eat them.  
  
She yawns and stretches, and then nudges Tim awake. The treehouse windows are still shut tight, but the air is cool with an early evening chill. The sun is setting, and they’ll need to be getting home soon.  
  
First, though, they need to talk.  
  
“Is everyone—okay?” she asks. It seems like such a stupid question—of course they aren’t okay.   
  
They all nod, though, so Sasha continues. “I think we should make a plan, for—how we’re going to deal with the spider. If it—hunts again.”  
  
“Oh god,” Tim says.  
  
“Jon, have you already explained things to—Martin, right?” Sasha finishes the question looking at Martin, and they both nod.  
  
“And—what’re your names?” Martin asks.  
  
Sasha laughs. “Oh my god, I didn’t—we didn’t—I’m so sorry,” she says. “Sasha.”  
  
“I’m Tim.”  
  
“Nice to, uh, meet you,” Martin says, and for a moment they are all silent, caught in the bizarre-ness of the moment.  
  
Then Jon laughs, and Martin joins in, and then they are laughing, softly, desperately.   
  
Soon enough, though, they are all sober again. "I explained everything," Jon confirms. "About the stories, and the spider, and the book."  
  
“It definitely was the book, right? Do we all agree about that?" Tim asks.  
  
They all nod. “It’s definitely connected to the book,” Jon says. “Everything I wrote in the book happened. The things we added later, like—the spider minions and the secret cave—didn’t. Besides which, it seems like a pretty big coincidence that the first story we wrote in the book just happened to be the one that came true.”  
  
"So...what do we do?" Sasha asks. "We can't just...let the spider keep hunting."  
  
"I think we should ask Mr. Bouchard how to stop it," Martin says. "The book came from him, didn't it?"

"You've never met Mr. Bouchard, have you?" Tim asks. "He's...I don't think he's very likely to help us.”  
  
"It seems like he wanted this to happen," Sasha says. "Or something like this."

"I think we should talk to him," Jon says. "I don't like the idea of it either, but it's at least somewhere to start. He at least might be able to give us...something. I mean, do either of you have a better idea?"

They don't.  
  
***  
  
They meet up early the next morning in Sasha’s kitchen. Both of her parents work, so the house is empty, and no one is home to know that the four of them are ditching school. They gather around Sasha as she carefully dial’s the school’s number, then makes her voice high and wavery in imitation of Jon’s gran, coughing every so often for good measure as she tells the school secretary that Jon unfortunately caught a very bad cold from her. Then she lightens her voice and calls as Martin’s mom, explaining that Martin has taken ill very suddenly and won’t be at school. She does the same for Tim and herself, this time dialing the middle school. In all, it’s a masterful performance, and she gives a little bow as she hangs up the phone for the fourth and final time.  
  
Then they are ready for the mission.  
  
Jon leads the way into the store, holding the book in front of him, away from his body. The others file in after him. The antique shop is just as dark and creepy as the last time Jon was there, but with his friends here, he doesn't sense an unseen presence watching, stalking him.

“Jonathan Sims, Sasha James, Tim Stoker,” Mr. Bouchard says as they enter, his voice smooth and polished as glass. “And Martin Blackwood. Interesting.”  
  
“Why did you give me this book?” Jon demands, placing the book on the counter.  
  
Elias’s gaze travels slowly over the book, then back to Jon. He stands, and walks around the counter towards their group. Elias Bouchard is not an especially tall man, but you don’t need to be especially tall to tower over a group of eleven-year-olds. “Did something happen?” he asks. His tone is kind, but there is a strange discrepancy between his words and his eyes. He looks…hungry.  
  
Jon feels his friends shrink away behind him, and he wants to step back, to stay close to them, but he holds his ground. “We were almost eaten by a spider,” Jon says.  
  
Elias smiles. “I’m afraid I’ll need more details than that.” He picks up the book. “Do you mind?” He asks Jon, but he doesn’t wait for a response before flicking it open and reading. “This does sound very frightening” he says, smiling. “But I don’t see how this involves me.”  
  
“You caused it,” Jon says. “You need to fix it. Reverse the story and change Principal Smith back into a person.”  
  
“Hmmm,” Mr. Bouchard says, leaning against his desk. “I must admit, I’m a bit disappointed, Jon. Do you honestly think this works like that, that there’s a simple fix that’ll make it so that none of this ever happened? Sometimes I forget that you are all just children.”  
  
Jon bristles at that, but before he can say anything else, Tim speaks.  
  
“Surely there’s something you can do, though. He’ll try to eat someone else if you don’t put a stop to it. You could—kill him.”  
  
Elias arches an eyebrow. “I could _kill_ him? What reason would I possibly have to do that?”  
  
They are all silent for a moment.  
  
“Then we’ll deal with it ourselves,” Sasha says.  
  
“You’re going to kill Principal Smith yourself?” Elias asks.  
  
“No, we’ll call the police,” Sasha says. “And we’ll tell them what to happened to us and how you’re the one who caused this.”  
  
Elias leans back on the desk. “Yes, a police investigation might be a good idea,” he says. “Except, of course, that the spider can easily manipulate their minds, make them forget anything incriminating they might see. I’m sure you already realize that no one will listen to you if you go around telling stories about a spider monster. You might get Mr. Smith investigated for kidnapping, but I find that questionable. What has he done, actually, except politely ask Martin to join him for an afternoon?  
  
“It wasn’t—he mind controlled me,” Martin protests.  
  
“Did he?” Elias said. “You don’t have any proof of that, other than your own word. And you may not yet have a reputation in this town, Mr. Blackwood, but these three most _certainly_ do. No, I’m afraid the police will be no help to you at all.”  
  
“Then we'll kill the spider ourselves,” Tim says, his voice loud and angry.  
  
“Tim,” Jon says. A warning. He is angry too, they are all angry, but there is something _wrong_ with this place. The shadows of the store are creeping up around them. Talking to Mr. Bouchard is not a good idea.  
  
“How?” Mr. Bouchard asks.  
  
“We’ll figure something out.”  
  
“If you do, I'll be _very_ impressed,” Mr. Bouchard says. “But we're talking about a creature that you’ve gifted with the power to invade your mind and override your will. You’re four children whose most dangerous weapon is a blunt pocket knife, and you've already identified yourselves to it as enemies, if not particularly threatening ones. Forgive me if I don’t have much faith that you'll succeed."  
  
Enough of this. “What do you want?” Jon demands. “You could have turned us away immediately, if you weren’t going to help us. We’ve established that you’re our only hope. So what do you want?”  
  
Mr. Bouchard smiles. “Jon, you are proving to be very promising indeed.” He looks down over them. “It’s really very simple. I’ll do what I can to help you out with this spider problem, if you will add another story to the book.”  
  
Sasha and Tim look at each other. Martin opens his mouth, “Maybe—”  
  
“No,” Jon interrupts, grabbing Martin’s wrist. “We’re not going to do that.”  
  
He grabs the book from Mr. Bouchard’s desk, and leaves.  
  
***  
  
"We could have written a story that wasn't scary," Martin says as they grab their bikes from outside the store. "Maybe we could have written a nice story."  
  
"Martin's right," Sasha says. "You shouldn't have pulled us out so quickly. We could have figured something out."  
  
"Do you guys actually think he would have accepted anything less than another nightmare?" Jon says, quietly. 

The other three look at each other. On their faces, Jon can see them desperately trying to cling to this last hope, and failing.

"What do we do, then?" Sasha asks.

"We burn the book," Jon says.

But when they try to burn the book, it won't catch fire. It actually isn’t much of a surprise, all things considering. It’s weirder when they learn that the pages won’t allow themselves to be ripped out, that nothing from white-out to black sharpie can cover up the ink of the spider story. They can’t leave the book anywhere where some unsuspecting soul might find it, and they don’t want to leave it anywhere where they have to see it.  
  
So they bury the book in Jon’s backyard.

And then they do their best to move on.  
  
They spend a lot of time riding their bikes around town. It turns out that Martin has a bike of his own, so several long afternoons are spent with Tim teaching Martin his best bike tricks. They spend long hours up in the treehouse, sometimes reading, sometimes snapping pictures with Martin’s polaroid camera, sometimes just talking.  
  
They never talk about the spider.

They try to forget about the spider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have tim, sasha, and jon dragged unsuspecting townspeople into their game before? yes, but that was like two full years ago and everyone should just forget about it already!
> 
> thanks for reading! <3
> 
> (jonathan swims update: every day when i feed him, i have him follow my finger around the top of the tank for a bit before i drop the pellet in the water. there are several plants with leaves that stretch to the top of the tank and sit on the water line. i sometimes cross over these leaves, trying to get him to swim under, but this fish. cannot figure it out. admittedly, he does sometimes swim under. just as often, though, he either a) swims all the way around the leaf, b) tries to jump over the leaf, or c) just sits there and looks at me like ?????????? mom there is an impenetrable barrier here????)


	5. the night visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes a deal.

There is a girl sitting on the bench outside Principal Smith’s office, waiting to see him.

Jon is walking back to class from the school library when he sees her. It’s been a month since they created the spider, a month since they rescued Martin, a month since they gave up on figuring out how to stop it. Things had finally gotten back to something approaching normal. 

Jon could just keep walking. If he does, he knows it won’t haunt him past today. If he remembers the little girl tomorrow, the spider didn’t eat her. If he doesn’t remember her, well…it’s not like he would know. He could continue to forget, could continue shedding the weight of what he’d seen.

Jon won’t do that, though. He ducks behind a trash can, watching the girl, waiting with dread for the moment when the door inevitably opens. She is younger than Jon. Blonde hair pulled into a braid, round freckled cheeks, glasses. He commits her face to memory. 

Jon hesitates when the door opens a few minutes later and Principal Smith calls the girl inside. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t have time to think of a coherent plan.

But he has to do something, so he rushes to stop the door from closing behind the girl.

“Jonathan Sims,” Principal Smith says, lifting one eyebrow. His voice isn’t unfriendly, exactly, but it is…dangerous. “What are you doing here?”

“Um, you’re needed in the cafeteria,” Jon lies. His voice is shaking. If Principal Smith wanted to, he could take Jon as easily as he would take this girl. He could take both of them, if he wanted to, and that thought isn’t remotely helpful, but Jon can’t scrape it from his brain.

Principal Smith laughs once, a joyless noise that doesn’t reach his face. His eyes burn with anger, and Jon takes an involuntary step backwards. “Jon,” he says, his voice slick with compulsion. “Go back to class. Don’t tell anyone about this.”

Jon tries to stop himself turning around, but he can’t. He returns to his classroom, and beneath the surface level of numbness, there is panic. He tries to think of something he can do, but he can’t think over the fog in his mind.

Jon opens his notebook and takes out a pencil. _Blonde hair round cheeks glasses_ , he writes. He wants to write, ”The spider took someone today, and this is what she looked like,” but evidently the spider’s compulsion applies to writing as well. Even these few words are difficult, nearly painful to put down. Several false starts later, Jon writes, _Do you remember?_ and circles it. He closes the notebook and his hands shake as he puts his pencil away. He rests his head on his desk, feeling sick.

“Are you okay?” Martin asks him in the hallway between classes, and Jon knows that he should tell Martin, that Martin would want to know, but Martin wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it either, and any attempt he makes is even more likely to put him in danger than Jon. So Jon just shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, and Martin doesn’t have time to grill him before they have to move on to their next class.

He avoids Martin after that, until the end of the day, when Martin grabs him as soon as they are dismissed. “Tell me what’s going on,” he says.

Jon just looks at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“You looked sick, earlier. More than sick—you looked like something horrible had just happened. And then you avoided me all day, and I’m—worried.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, and he means it. “Nothing happened, I swear. I just felt really nauseous earlier for no reason, and I didn’t really feel like talking.”

Jon is a terrible liar, but these aren’t lies. He does feel better, and after giving him a long, searching look, Martin accepts this response. They head to the treehouse to meet Sasha and Tim, and the four of them hang up Martin’s polaroid pictures, arguing the whole time about the best display scheme. When the sun sets, Jon goes home, and when he sleeps, his dreams are clear.

The next day, he gets to class, and opens his notebook. He reads the words, and reads them again. Slowly, understanding dawns on him, and he feels suddenly light-headed. Dizzy.

Martin looks over at him, concerned. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Jon nods, turning the page quickly so Martin won’t see. “I’m fine,” he whispers.

***

After school, Jon tells Martin he doesn’t feel well, and he heads home. It helps that it’s the truth—Jon feels like he might throw up at any moment, especially when he tries to think about the face of a kid that he no longer remembers. He wonders if there have been others. He has no idea how much the spider needs to eat, but a month is a long time to fast, especially since it lost its most recent meal. Jon wonders if he’s ever tried to stop it before. He doesn't know if he'd rather that be true or not.

There’s no time for him to rest. He finds the little plot in the backyard where the grass has been disturbed. The dirt is still loose from when they first buried it, so it isn’t hard to dig the book up.

Jon tucks it in his backpack, wiping dirt from his hands as he stands. It’s time to make a deal with Mr. Bouchard.

***

The book is a heavy weight in Jon’s hand as he enter the antique shop, once again. This time, he doesn’t hesitate at the threshold. He walks in and approaches Mr. Bouchard’s perch behind his desk. He sets the book down and meets Mr. Bouchard’s eyes. “I’ll give you a story, if you make it so that the spider won’t—eat anyone else.”

Mr. Bouchard tilts his head. “Really? You were so _adamantly_ against the idea last time.”

Jon swallows, thinking of those words in his notebook, the kid with blonde hair and round cheeks and glasses. “Will you help me?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Mr. Bouchard says. “But first, I want to hear a little more about you, Jon.”

“Why?”

Mr. Bouchard shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “You interest me.” He taps his fingers on the desk a few times, looking off into distant corners of the shop before returning his eyes to Jon. “I expected it would be you,” he says, matter-of-fact. “The other three are more pliable, more trusting. None of them hate me as much as you.”

“We all hate you,” Jon mutters before he can stop himself.

But Mr. Bouchard only smiles. “Maybe. But you’re the only one who hates me enough to make a deal with me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mr. Bouchard makes a non-committal gesture. “Tell me something. Do your friends know that you’re here? Do they have any inkling of the decision you’ve made?”

Jon knows that he shouldn’t answer, but something about Mr. Bouchard’s tone makes him feel hopelessly small and alone, like it doesn’t matter what Mr. Bouchard knows because nothing Jon does would ever be strong enough resist. “No,” he says quietly.

Mr. Bouchard nods. “I thought so. You’re a lot like me, Jon. I see a lot of potential in you.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Jon says.

“We’ll see,” Mr. Bouchard says. Then he stands, grabbing the book. “Come with me,” he says. “I’m sure there’s a nice place for you to write somewhere in here.” He leads Jon to a small corner table, closed off from the rest of the shop by shelves of old knickknacks. 

Jon sits down, and Mr. Bouchard places the book in front of him. “A pen,” he says. “One moment.” And then Jon is alone, with nothing but the quiet feeling that some unseen but undoubtedly malevolent force in the shop is watching him.

He’s almost relieved when Mr. Bouchard returns, although the feeling quickly sinks back into dread as his hand closes around the pen. This is a bad idea. Jon knows that this is a bad idea, but there is nothing else to do. Someone is _dead_ , and Jon must have seen them, but he can’t picture their face. They’d been scared, and Jon hadn’t helped them. He couldn’t let it happen again.

Jon opens the book, paging past his handwriting of the spider story to a fresh, blank sheet.

Jon speaks quietly. “Does it have to be—bad?”

Elias laughs. “Are you asking if a happy story, about sunshine and friendship, will be satisfactory?”

Jon nods tightly.

“You already know the answer to that one, don’t you, Jon?”

He does, and the ice that has been clamped over his chest drags its claws up his throat. He wants to cry, but he won’t. Not with Mr. Bouchard there, smiling, enjoying every moment of his terror. Jon already knows what story he’s going to tell, so with a trembling hand, he begins to write.

***

_Once, Jonathan Sims slept. Now, he never sleeps, for fear of the creature that waits for him when he closes his eyes._

_Once, Jonathan Sims slipped into dreams like everyone else, a gradual relaxation into oblivion. Once, Jonathan Sims dreamed ordinary dreams, the result of subconscious thoughts flickering across his unconscious mind. Sometimes his dreams were scary, but just as often they were happy and bright._

_When the Night Visitor came, Jon’s sleep became something twisted and dark, never welcoming, never restful. Whenever he closed his eyes for more than a moment, a clawed hand would wrap itself around his throat and pull him, unwillingly, into a land deeper and darker than the subconscious._

_The Night Visitor knows exactly what its victim fears most, and it manifests that feeling in each and every one of their dreams. Jon doesn’t always see it in his dreams, but it is always there, watching him, feasting on his fear. There is no way for Jon to escape its grasp, nothing he can do to trick it._

_The Night Visitor is Jon’s constant companion in a nightmare that will never end._

***

It isn’t much, but Jon can’t force himself to go on.

Mr. Bouchard picks up the book, then lets out a little laugh as he reads over the pages. “I suppose I should have expected as much, but somehow it never occurred to me that you would be willing to so thoroughly martyr yourself.”

“Is it enough?” Jon asks. He voice sounds far away. He doesn’t let his mind think about what he’s just done, the nightmare he has committed to paper.

Elias nods. “Yes, this is more than satisfactory, Jon.”

“So what are you going to do about the spider?” Jon asks. “You have to do something before it hunts again. I don’t know how much time there is.”

Elias smiles thinly. “Oh, Jon. I’m afraid I won’t be doing anything about the spider.”

“No,” Jon says. “No. You have to. You said—”

“I said that I would do what I can,” Elias says, raising his hand in front of him. “What I _can_ do about the spider is—nothing. Therefore, you and I are ‘square’, aren’t we?”

Jon’s mouth is open, but he can’t think of words. Elias can’t do this. It isn’t fair. “No,” Jon says. “I gave you a story, so you—you have to—” He doesn’t finish. He can’t finish, can’t think of words to say that won’t sound utterly pathetic. Elias is staring at him with his hungry eyes, and he can feel the shop staring at him, too. He can feel the shadows growing longer around him, as if his fear is becoming a tangible thing in the air.

He’s damned himself. He’s damned himself, for nothing. The spider will still hunt, and Jon will still be powerless to stop it. More powerless now, because—

Jon doesn’t let himself think about it. He takes the book, numbly, and leaves the store.

He wants to go to Martin’s house. Or Tim’s. Or Sasha’s. Anywhere, where he won’t be alone. He thinks about falling asleep with his friends close by, willing to wake him up if they hear his nightmares getting too terrible. But it won’t do any good. Friends or not, the Night Visitor is coming for him. When he faces it, every time he closes his eyes to sleep, he will be alone.

***

Jon doesn’t tell the others what he’s done.

He doesn’t tell them about the nightmares or the Night Visitor, and he doesn’t tell them about the ever-growing list of spider victims he keeps in his notebook.

They assume that he’s still upset from their initial meeting with the spider. They understand; they’re all traumatized, and if Jon’s nightmares are worse than everyone else’s, they’re perfectly willing to support him through that bad luck. 

The four of them meet at the treehouse every day, and things aren’t that different. Sasha still reads her books. Tim still draws his pictures. Martin still recites his poems, smiling when the others are captured by the beauty of the language. On good days, Jon tells stories about happy people in happy situations. They aren’t as interesting as his scary stories, but the others still listen. 

Most of the time, though, Jon just sleeps, always curled up against one or more of his friends. He sleeps with his head resting Sasha’s lap, her fingers absently carding through his hair as she reads, or leaning against Tim’s shoulder as he tries to draw without moving his arm too much.

At first, they assume that Jon sleeps more peacefully with them than he does at home. He doesn’t stir from his sleep, doesn’t show any signs of distress that they know accompany their own nightmares. They make jokes about him being like a cat, especially when his sleeping position prevents his accommodating friend from moving around as they’d like. They even tease Jon, a little bit, for how out of it he always seems when they wake him from his naps.

One day, Jon wakes up curled under Martin's arm, and immediately turns his face into Martin’s shoulder, crying. Martin doesn’t do anything except tighten his arm around Jon. Beyond a look shared between Martin, Sasha, and Tim, no one says anything. They don’t talk about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bullies jon has to deal with in fifth grade: mike crew, jane prentiss, and me. i'm by far the worst one. 
> 
> jonathan swims update: i got him a coconut cave. he does not understand how it works and is clearly confused about why Big Universe doesn't exist inside Small Universe.
> 
> thanks for reading! <3


	6. interlude - elias bouchard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deals are made. Promises are kept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyy guys. sorry for leaving you hanging for a month. time really just doesn't exist anymore for me.
> 
> there's lots of good news though! first of all, we have an estimate for how many more chapters we have before we finish this thing! i also have a Writing Schedule for this fic now, which will hopefully get you all more regular updates. my main talent, though, is making schedules and then ignoring them, so...we'll see.
> 
> also, thank you for all of your comments and kudos and kind words! i'm very bad at replying to things, but i treasure every single comment i get. they make me stronger.

Later, Jon would blame himself for what happened. He should have told the others about how Mr. Bouchard tricked him, the curse he’d taken upon himself in exchange for _nothing_. He should have warned them, but he didn’t want them to worry. They were healing, they were forgetting, and he didn’t want them to be dragged down by the weight of his nightmares.

And maybe, too, he didn’t want them to be angry with him for acting on his own.

So he re-buried the book, and he slept as little as possible, and he kept a page in his notebook with descriptions of the spider’s victims. When his friends asked if he was okay, he assured them that he was perfectly fine.

Winter break came and went, and in the joy of long, empty days and snow on the ground and evenings spent sprawled in front of a fireplace with mugs of hot chocolate, Jon’s friends began to shed the worst of their terror.

Eventually, they start thinking about making a deal with the devil.

***

Martin and Jon share five classes out of the eight periods that make up the school day: first and second, fourth, sixth, and seventh. Martin sits in the desk behind Jon, which serves two purposes: first, it allows Martin to throw discouraging glares at the likes of Mike Crew and Jane Prentiss, who like to amuse themselves by throwing balled-up paper and wads of gum at the back of Jon’s head. Second, Martin can watch for the tell-tale signs that Jon is starting to nod off and give him a poke or two to keep him awake.

Sixth period is a particular problem time. It’s math, and Martin isn’t particularly good with numbers. They do a lot of worksheets that have Martin hunched over his desk, working hard to puzzle out the correct answers. Jon _also_ isn’t particularly good with numbers, but unlike Martin, this tends to manifest in boredom and disinterest and daydreams that quickly turn into actual dreams. Martin tries to keep an eye on Jon, but focused as he is, Martin tends to miss the signs that Jon has fallen asleep.

Such is the case when Ms. Dale approaches their desks and taps Jon on the shoulder. He jolts up with a gasp, causing Martin to jump, and Ms. Dale says, “Jon, this is the sixth time you’ve fallen asleep in my class.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says softly, and he doesn’t sound tired, he just sounds scared. Another nightmare, Martin guesses with a pang of sympathy. Even during his tiny classroom naps, Jon can’t escape them.

“I know, Jon, but we’ve talked about this before. I think you should go see Principal Smith and have a talk with him about your sleeping habits.”

“I—” Jon says, and even sitting behind him, Martin can see his shoulders tense up with fear. He can hear Mike Crew snickering with his friends at the back of the class, but that’s the least of their problems. Jon can’t be sent to the spider’s office. He’d be eaten!

They need a distraction. Martin doesn’t know what would be a good enough distraction to make Ms. Dale forget about sending Jon to the principal, but he’s sure he can come up with something in the next _one second_.

Then, before Martin can do anything, Jon is on the floor, fainted.

“Oh my goodness, Jon,” the Ms. Dale says, kneeling down to where Jon has collapsed. He’s already conscious again, blinking quickly, but he looks dazed and confused. “You should go see the nurse,” Ms. Dale says. “Martin, will you take him?”

“Yes ma’am,” Martin says, standing up and helping Jon to his feet.

“Are you okay?” Martin says as the door to the classroom closes behind them.

Jon just nods. His eyes are still distant, troubled by some dreamscape that only he knows about. 

“Are they really that bad?” Martin asks. Jon looks at Martin with a flat expression on his face.

“Right, sorry. Of course they are.” Martin is silent for a moment. “I’ve been trying to look into different ways to help with bad dreams. I’ve been looking into lucid dreaming; have you ever considered trying that?”

Jon’s eyes suddenly snap to the present moment, focused totally on Martin. “ _No!_ ” he says, as if it’s obvious that it was a bad idea, as if Martin is stupid for bringing up the idea. It’s not stupid, though. At least, Martin doesn’t think it is.

“Why…not?” he asks.

“My dreams are bad enough already, I don’t need to be aware during them too,” Jon snaps.

“But if you’re controlling the dreams—”

Jon laughs at that, and Martin doesn’t know why it’s funny, but all he can focus on is how deeply, endlessly tired Jon sounds. Then Jon says, “My nightmares aren’t important. What’s more important is that the two of us manage to stay away from Principal Smith. We got lucky this time.”

“You could always just faint again.”

It’s a pretty bad attempt at a joke, and Jon rolls his eyes at it. “Like I said. We got lucky. I’ll try to get more sleep at night so that I’m less likely to fall asleep during class, but…sleeping more doesn’t really make me less tired these days. And…” Jon hesitates for a moment, as if he’s debating telling Martin something. “And it’s not just the falling asleep in class, it’s also Mike and Jane and all the others.”

“I can protect you from them,” Martin says. He can’t do anything about the spider or the nightmares, but he can at least do this.

“No!” Jon says. “It’s—You can’t risk getting in trouble for being involved. And neither can they, honestly—what if they get sent to Principal Smith’s office for picking on me? I just need to avoid them, but it seems like they’re always looking for me, and I’m just, I’m so _tired_ —” Jon’s voice starts to break down on the last word, and he covers his face with his hands.

“Jon, are you okay?” Martin asks.

Jon takes a breath and pulls his hands away from his face. His eyes are red. “I’m fine,” he says.

“Jon—”

“Really, Martin,” Jon says. “I’m fine.” And he sounds so fragile saying that, and Martin has the distinct feeling that if he pushed just a little harder, Jon would completely fall apart. Martin doesn’t know if he could live with himself for doing that, so he doesn’t press. He drops Jon off at the nurse and goes back to class.

That Saturday, Martin goes to see Mr. Bouchard.

***

Mr. Bouchard isn’t sitting behind his desk this time. The shop is still and quiet, lifeless. Martin has a thought to go looking for Mr. Bouchard amongst the shelves, but he has a creeping feeling that if he strays too far from the door, he won’t be able to find his way back. 

“E-Excuse me?” Martin calls, and his voice is quiet, but it still sounds like blasphemy in the silent shop. Somewhere a clock is ticking, and it is awareness of this fact that almost sends Martin fleeing out the door. A silent shop is merely empty, but an almost-silent shop is a shop haunted by presences unseen. Martin is alone, and the thing that lurked in the shop could—

Martin stops the thought, cutting it off at its base. He _needs_ to be here. For Jon’s sake.

“Mr Bouchard?” He calls again.

This time, a response comes from amongst the maze of shelves. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Mr. Bouchard emerges from the shelves and his eyes catch instantly on Martin. “Young Mr. Blackwood,” he says. “What brings you here?”

The urge to run tightens around Martin’s throat, but he forces himself to stay put. “I want to make a deal,” he says.

“Really?” Mr. Bouchard leans against his desk, resting on one elbow. “In that case, you should come in. We can hardly conduct serious business with you standing in the doorway like that.”

Hesitantly, Martin takes a few steps away from the door.

One corner of Mr. Bouchard’s mouth twitches upwards, and he crooks his finger toward Martin, beckoning him closer. Martin swallows, and moves forward until he is standing in front of Mr. Bouchard. If Mr. Bouchard tries to hurt him, there’s no way Martin will make it to the door in time to escape. He wishes he’d told Sasha and Tim what he was doing. They would have tried to talk him out of it, but at least they would know where he was. His disappearance wouldn’t be a total mystery.

“Better,” Mr. Bouchard says. “So, what kind of deal did you have in mind?”

He isn’t going to disappear. He is going to make his deal, and then he is going to leave. “I—I was wondering if you knew of any way to stop nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” Mr. Bouchard drums his fingers on the desk. “I’d hoped for something a little more interesting. Still, I guess it makes sense, given what you went through with our spider friend.”

“No, it’s not for me, it’s—” Martin stops himself. The less Mr. Bouchard knows, the better.

Mr. Bouchard hums, looking at him critically. “I see,” he says. “I might have some advice for nightmares. For the right price.”

“Do you have advice?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said you might have advice. I’m asking, _do_ you?” Martin can’t help but think of stories of people tricked by genies or fairies by not being precise enough with their language.

Martin is certain that a normal adult would laugh at the notion of a child confused by idiomatic language. But Mr. Bouchard only smiles coldly. “Clever,” he says. “Yes, I do have advice. What are you offering in return?”

“A story,” Martin says.

Mr. Bouchard nods, as if this is the answer he expected to hear. As if this is a perfectly normal transaction that would happen in any other shop. “Let’s hear it,” he says. 

“I just—tell you?”

“If you like. If you want my advice for the nightmares.”

“Okay.” Martin feels nervous, suddenly. He’s never been one for performances. It isn’t even his story to tell, is it? It’s something he was given, from Jon and Sasha and Tim, something innocent. And he was dragging it into the darkness.

But it was worth it, if it would help Jon.

“Underneath the visitor’s bleachers at the high school football field, there’s this one really dark, shadowy area.” The others had taken Martin there in the first few weeks after he joined their group. It was creepy, the way the light seeped away in the metal maze beneath the bleachers, the way even the noise seemed duller there. Martin had asked what caused it, and there had been a moment of heavy silence before Sasha finally said, with a soft smile, “The shadow people like it.”

“The shadow people live there,” Martin continues, “When they aren’t busy hunting. They’re shape shifters, and they like to steal people away and step into their lives, um—for a little while, at least. They’re cruel and evil, and by the time they release their prey, the person will come back into their own life to see that all of their loved ones have died or--abandoned them.”

It was the first story Jon had made up for them. All of the kids in town were fascinated by that dark spot, and as third-graders, Tim and Sasha had loved the idea that they were the only people in town who knew the truth about it. They had spent almost a year on this one story, “tracking” the shadow people from person to person. Even when they’d finally defeated the shadow people and moved on to the next monster, they kept their secret handshakes and codes from those early days. Even now that the idea of monsters had been ruined for all of them, they still asked each other that question, every time they met. “Have you been replaced by shadow people?” It was something familiar, something entirely theirs, something that belonged to the time when everything was safe.

And Martin is giving that to Mr. Bouchard.

No, not giving. He’s trading it. For Jon’s sake.

Martin swallows as the silence stretched out between them. “That’s it. Is it—”

“Satisfactory,” Mr. Bouchard says. “As for my advice…” he trails off, looking around the shop with narrowed eyes. He takes a few steps across the shop to a broad cabinet, which he opens to reveal shelves of books inside. He scans the shelves for a few moments before pulling out a slim blue volume, which he hands to Martin.

Martin opens the book to the title page. _Meditation: The Complete Approach._ “Meditation?” He can’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Of course,” Mr. Bouchard says. “I’ve found that this particular style of meditation is helpful for even the most troublesome nightmares. I encourage you to give it a try.”

“Right,” Martin says, flipping through the book. It’s only forty pages or so, with large text and plenty of diagrams, so normal that Martin can’t help feeling a little cheated. But what had he really given up in exchange? The bring-monsters-to-life book was still buried in Jon’s backyard, so it wasn’t like Mr. Bouchard would have any use for the story.

When Jon asks where the book came from, Martin tells him that he found it amongst his father’s old things. It’s a safe lie—even if Jon suspected Martin wasn’t telling the truth, no one with any sense would ever ask Martin’s mother about her ex-husband. Not that Jon would ever suspect anything. He takes the book and promises to read through it, although he doesn’t seem at all hopeful about the effectiveness of it.

He seems better, the next day. He doesn’t fall asleep in class again.

***

Tim is next, that May, when his parents decide to spend a month of the summer vacation visiting family on the coast. He worries about his friends, worries that something terrible will happen to them while he’s gone, so he asks Mr. Bouchard to ensure that they’ll be okay.

In return, he tells Mr. Bouchard, “Actually, every building in town in haunted.” He smiles as he says it, like it’s a funny story instead of a scary one. It _is_ a funny story. At least, Tim always thought so. That’s why he’s giving Mr. Bouchard this story, rather than one of those that used to keep him awake at night, before spidery things began to dominate his fearful imagination. “We always called it the Shared Spirit, and it’s basically a door-to-door ghost. It’s not really a ghost, though. It’s not the remains of some dead person. It’s just—itself, I guess."

“It likes to travel,” Tim continues. “So it does. It goes to different people’s houses and slams the doors and makes the lights flicker. A different house every day, every hour. It gets bored easily, so it moves around.”

“Is that all?” Mr. Bouchard says, and his tone is unimpressed.

Tim shakes his head. “The thing is—it doesn’t always get bored. Sometimes it latches on to a person or a place, and it haunts them until something _breaks_. And if that’s you, well, there’s not much you can do about it. It’s—it isn’t like a person. It can’t be bargained with or tricked. Once it has its sights set on you—you’re a goner.”

Tim looks up. “Is that enough?”

“Yes, I think it is,” Mr. Bouchard says.

“You’ll protect them, then?”

“Mr. Stoker,” Mr. Bouchard says. “I promise no harm will come to your friends while you are away.”

And maybe nothing bad would have happened to them anyway. Maybe Mr. Bouchard never intended to lift a finger to help them. But come July, Sasha and Jon and Martin are all okay. That’s good enough for Tim.

***

Next comes Sasha, in September. Jon and Martin have made it to middle school, and in some ways this is better. They’re all together again. They don’t have to worry so much that the spider will get them. On the other hand, it’s middle school, and Jon manages to attract even more bullies than he did before, and Martin might be bigger than the other kids in his class, but the eighth-graders still tower over him, and these bullies travel in packs. 

She asks if Mr. Bouchard can do anything to stop it, and she tells him, “A creature lives in the field on the outskirts of town, and every night it hunts.” 

“It’s big,” she says. “And its eyes are red, and even in the darkness, you can feel it watching you.” 

She chews at her thumb, thinking. “Once, Jon and Tim and I saw it. We rode our bikes to the field around sunset, intending to stay out there into the night. We wanted to kill it. It wasn’t even dark yet, but beneath the sound of our voices and our footsteps, we could hear a deep silence of something there. All I saw was its size, on four legs as tall as full-grown man. Jon got the best look at it, and he told us about its eyes and its fangs and its ears that were a little too big for its head and its head that was a little too big for its body. It’s a caricature of an animal, and it lives in the field, and we have never been back there. At least, we haven’t been back there at night.”

Sasha’s voice shakes a little as she finishes her story. Honestly, that night in the field hadn’t been all that scary—it was Tim who had gotten spooked more than anyone else—but recounting it here, with Mr. Bouchard looking over her critically, it feels like something that actually happened, rather than a story they’d made up to make Tim feel better.

Jared Hopworth disappears, and his gang loses their enthusiasm for picking on kids much smaller than them. There’s a rumor that Jared was arrested, sent to juvie or wherever they send thirteen-year-old criminals. Sasha doesn’t know if she believes the rumors, or if she believes the niggling feeling in the back of her mind that Jared met a much crueler fate.

Jon and Martin gradually lose the look of stalked prey, though, and Sasha thinks that it doesn’t really matter.

***

There are more furtive trips to the antique shop. They never confess to each other, although it’s hard to say that they don’t suspect. At least, Sasha and Tim and Martin suspect, whenever the tides of fate seem to tilt in their favor. They wonder if one of their friends has traded a story on their behalf. Maybe they even _hope_ for it, because even though Mr. Bouchard always comes through on his side of the deal, they each feel that they are betraying the others by talking to him. It’s better, isn’t it, if the others are doing the same thing?

Sometimes, Mr. Bouchard asks for two stories. Sometimes he asks for three. They try not to think too much about it. There can’t be any harm in it; after all, they’ve all made deals with him before, and the sky didn’t fall and the world didn’t end.

The book is safely buried where no one will ever find it. There’s no harm in trading a few stories.

***

Martin misses Jon.

Not that he’s gone anywhere. Martin sees him every day, in class, at the lunch table they share with Sasha and Tim, in the treehouse after school. Jon is still present.

But he’s…distant. Since fifth grade and the spider and the nightmares, Jon has distanced himself from the group, not in body, but clearly in mind. Martin never knows what Jon is thinking about. He rarely joins in on conversations, and even direct questions tend to be met with only very short responses.

It’s worse, since they’ve gotten to high school. Jon quickly gains a reputation for being a bit mentally unstable, which at once makes everyone steer clear of him and target him. It’s painful to watch Jon move through school, everything about him so carefully controlled, everything about him liable to snap at the slightest provocation.

Martin tries to protect him, but it isn’t enough. It’s never enough, and when Martin (or Sasha, or Tim) tries to talk to him about it, he refuses. He says, “I’m fine,” like it isn’t obvious he’s the farthest thing possible from fine. 

One day, Martin corners Jon after a particularly rough day of school and says, “Jon, I know that there is something going on with you. This isn’t normal.”

“Sure it is, Martin,” Jon says. “You can’t expect high school to not be hell.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. What happened to you that the rest of us didn’t see? Was it something with the spider, or—” A terrible thought flashes through Martin’s head. “Did Mr. Bouchard do something?”

“Martin, nothing happened,” Jon says, angry and loud enough that several people look over at them. He won’t meet Martin’s eyes, though, so Martin doesn’t want to drop it.

“Jon, please, I want to help--"

“How could you _possibly_ help, Martin?” Jon says, and his voice squeaks on the end of the sentence, and Martin recognizes the signs that he’s on the verge of breaking down. Jon leans back against the wall, putting a hand over his mouth, breathing slowly. Martin leans next to him, pressing his shoulder against Jon’s.

After a long moment, Jon steps away. "Let's get out of here," he says.

***

When he visits Mr. Bouchard, Martin asks, “What’s going on with Jon?”

Mr. Bouchard is seated behind his desk, and he meets Martin’s eyes coolly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, I’m not stupid. There’s something wrong with him, and I _know_ you had something to do with it.”

Mr. Bouchard lets out a long breath. “Mr. Blackwood, I will ask you to consider why you have come here. Do you really think it is in your best interest to proceed with these unfounded accusations?”

“They’re hardly unfounded."

“Be that as it may, do you really think it’s the best use of your time? I don’t think you came here to get a confession, now did you?”

“I—”

“No, you came here to make a deal. So let’s hear it. What do you want?”

For a moment, Martin just stands there. He suddenly feels very stupid, and more than a little scared. This is a bad decision, he knows it’s a bad decision. He thinks of Jon, falling apart a little more every day. He doesn’t have another option. “I want you to help him,” Martin says quietly.

Mr. Bouchard hums. “I see.” He taps his fingers a few times on his desk in thoughtful silence. “Yes, I think I can do that.”

Martin’s mind swirls with a mixture of relief and dread. He’s never asked for Mr. Bouchard’s help so directly before. “Is a story enough?” he asks.

Mr. Bouchard hums. “I don’t think a story is necessary, in this case. I’ll do this one free of charge.” 

“Free?”

Mr. Bouchard smiles, and Martin can’t say exactly what’s wrong about it. “You’re not the only one who cares about Jon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obligatory jonathan swims update: this fish hates my dad. i don't know why, but every time my dad gets close to the tank, jon flares his gills and tries to scare him off. he's such a little dork. this kind of behavior is why everyone in my family prefers daisy the snail over jon. daisy isn't an absolute brat. she's just a snail who *loves* cucumbers more than life itself.
> 
> final thing: i exist on tumblr! @suttttton (that's 5 t's) come yell with me about the magnus archives (or anything else)
> 
> thanks for reading <3


	7. nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon doesn't have a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (check the bottom of this chapter for content warnings)
> 
> remember when i said i made an actual, real update schedule that i'm trying to stick to? well, here we are! i've been having some really great writing days and i'm pretty excited for all the things that lie ahead in this fic, so my goal of finishing by the end of the month juuuust might come to fruition.
> 
> you guys' lovely comments really help with the motivation, thank you so much for the kind words and encouragement! i love hearing your thoughts and theories, and i'm really excited for you guys to see how much worse i can make things for these poor children <3

Jon lays in bed, curled up under his blankets, and focuses on breathing. He can feel The Night Visitor lurking at the edges of his consciousness, but he ignores it. His head hurts and his body aches, and soon he’ll be asleep. But for now, he simply breathes, reminding himself that he is still awake. It helps draw a distinction between reality and nightmare.

When he’d created this curse for himself, Jon had written that the Night Visitor pulled its victims into its nightmares with a clawed hand around their throat. Jon wishes for that, but instead it’s the skittering feeling of a thousand tiny legs covering him, encasing him in web until he can’t move or breathe or think.

In the early days, Jon thought that he would eventually get used to it, especially after a week, two weeks, a month of the same dream every night. He thought time and age might numb the fear, but they don’t. The very idea seems hopelessly optimistic now. If he stopped being terrified of the spider, the Night Visitor would just populate the dreams with something worse.

Jon doesn't want to imagine the kind of thing that might be worse.

In the dream, Jon is trapped in an immense web. Sometimes he’s able to move a little bit, but most of the time he’s stuck tight. Always, there’s an immense spider nearby. Usually, Jon can see it, but sometimes he can only sense it, dreading the moment when it will crawl towards him. 

He isn’t always alone in the web. Sometimes he is joined by the descriptions from his notebook, faces that he’s sure he’s seen before, but that never remembers when he wakes up. Worse than that is when it’s Sasha or Tim or Martin trapped with him, screaming at him to _do something_ , to _help them_. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t do anything, and when the spider eats them, the dream doesn’t even let Jon look away.

Every day, Jon wakes up with screams echoing in his ears and tears in his eyes, and then he goes to school and desperately tries to stop his hands from shaking. His teachers mark points off for his messy handwriting, but no one ever catches him having a panic attack in the bathroom. Jon isn’t okay, he knows he isn’t okay, but he isn’t spiralling either. It’s fine. He’s _fine_.

Then the dreams get worse.

The thing is, in four years, the spider never actually touched Jon. He thought that was intentional. Dream pain could never be as bad as real-life pain, so the Night Visitor didn’t try to inflict it on Jon. It was enough for him to be terrified of the possibility, which always seemed like an inevitability in the dreams.

One night in early September, the spider eats him, and Jon finds out that he was wrong. Dream pain is every bit as bad as real-life pain, and worse. There’s no blacking out when you’re already asleep.

When Jon wakes up, his body aches. The first few days, he told himself it was just from tossing and turning all night, even though he knows very well that the nightmares are quiet things. He starts to find marks, tiny red bumps on his skin where he remembers the spider biting into him, injecting its venom. He doesn’t know what that means, and it scares him.

Jon sits up, giving up on sleep for the time being. There’s no real point in avoiding sleep—the Night Visitor will catch him eventually—but he’s trembling just waiting for it to show up. Might as well find a distraction.

He slides his legs off the bed and stands up, waving his arms in front of him in the dark room, searching blindly for his desk. When he was younger, he refused to move around his room in the dark, lest something— _a spider_ —grab him and drag him away. Getting into bed every night was a mad dash, flicking off the lights and then diving under the covers as quickly as possible.

The Night Visitor had changed that. Jon was still a little scared that something( _a spider_ ) might be lurking in the dark corners of his room but honestly? It wouldn’t be any great loss for it to just kill him. It’s not like anyone would miss him.

Jon regrets the thought. Martin would miss him. And Sasha and Tim. They would almost certainly be better off without him—but they _would_ miss him.

Jon finds his desk and crouches beside it, digging through its bottom drawer, fumbling to find his flashlight. He’s sure it’s in here—There! He grabs it and flicks it on. The dim light is much creepier than the darkness, somehow, and Jon can’t help but wave the flashlight quickly over the dark corners of the room. No monsters. ( _No spiders._ ) 

Jon grabs a book from his shelf and settles in to read, balancing the flashlight between his shoulder and his neck.

For the first time in four years, he doesn’t notice when he falls asleep.

***

Jon is in the antique shop, except it can’t be the antique shop because there are _things_ lurking in the dark, twisting shadows of the antique shop, things that watch and wait for the perfect moment to strike. Somewhere a clock is ticking, and this shop is calm. Jon has the fleeting notion that he’s never felt this safe before.

But that can’t be right, can it? There’s a mug in his hands, full of tea. Jon takes a sip, and it’s almost too hot to swallow, but it feels nice going down his throat, like he’s sick and needs something warm and soothing. He isn’t sick, though. Does he even like tea? He must. Why would Mr. Bouchard have made it for him, if he didn’t like tea?

Mr. Bouchard is seated across from him, sipping on his own mug of tea. They’re seated in ornate, vintage chairs, the kind that Jon has always kind of thought looked like they belonged in a palace. It makes sense that Mr. Bouchard would have chairs like these. They look like antiques, but they’re very comfortable.

They have tea like this all the time, don’t they? They must, because how else could Jon be here, seated in this chair? Mr. Bouchard made him this tea, and Jon feels safe, _actually_ safe, so this _must_ be normal.

It is normal. Jon doesn’t know how he could have forgotten.

Mr. Bouchard is talking, and Jon is responding. They’re having a conversation, but none of the words seem to make any sense. He’s speaking gibberish, and this suddenly strikes Jon as the funniest thing possible. He starts laughing, and it’s made worse when Mr. Bouchard once again speaks, his words completely unintelligible. Jon puts both of his hands over his mouth and doubles over, completely overcome.

…He’s being rude, isn’t he? He frowns and sits up quickly, worried that Mr. Bouchard will be offended. But Mr. Bouchard is just smiling. Jon picks up his mug from where it now lays on the table and takes another sip. The clock is still ticking. Jon wonders idly why he doesn’t come to this place more often, and there’s something buzzing at the back of his consciousness, something that he’s forgetting.

Jon doesn’t worry about it. He presses his mug against his face and leans back in his chair, enjoying the warmth.

***  
  
Jon wakes up, and for the first time in years, he doesn’t feel more tired than when he went to sleep. He doesn’t feel safe, he _never_ feels safe, but he does feel…warm. And that’s somehow worse than if he felt terrified because Mr. Bouchard was in his dream, and—

And what?

For the first time in four years, the Night Visitor wasn’t in Jon’s dreams. Elias Bouchard was, and the dream felt warm and safe, and Jon has no idea what that means.

Jon has never been so grateful for the weekend. There’s no chance he’d be able to make it through a full day of school. He looks at his clock. 7:00am. The antique store won’t be open yet.

Jon taps his fingers on his legs. It doesn’t matter, he decides. He can’t just sit here waiting for something terrible to happen. He needs to move.

He’s out the door five minutes later, and ten minutes after that, he’s standing outside the antique shop. He tries the door. It’s locked, which is no great surprise. He looks for a placard announcing the store’s opening times, but there is none.

Jon frowns, and tries knocking. He has a sudden thought that whatever is lurking in the shop might hear him, that maybe he doesn’t want the door to open. He doesn’t even know for sure that Mr. Bouchard lives here. Now that he's thinking about it, Jon realizes what a preposterous assumption that is in the first place. Why would Mr. Bouchard live inside his shop? Jon feels suddenly like a small child, shocked to discover that their teacher has a life outside of school, never before imagining that they might exist outside the context of a classroom.

He stops knocking, and is about to turn away, to sit down on the curb in front of the shop and wait for Mr. Bouchard to arrive. Then the door starts to swing open, and Jon takes a quick step back, his first thought that he’s about to be devoured by the lurking creature.

Then he’s face-to-face with Mr. Bouchard, for the first time in four years. He’s disgusted at how relieved he feels, and he forces himself to think of the last time he saw this man, the last time he was in this shop, ten years old, truly scared for the first time in his life, facing down a monster. It’s been four years, but the memory still fills Jon with ice cold dread. Mr. Bouchard is not safe. Jon needs to remember that.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you this early,” Mr. Bouchard says. He doesn’t look tired, or at all like he’s been roused from sleep. Jon can’t imagine this man sleeping.

“Why were you in my dream?” Jon wishes he could keep his voice from shaking.

Mr. Bouchard ignores the question and simply open the door further. “Do you want to come inside?"

Jon _doesn_ ’t want to go inside, but they can hardly have a real conversation on the sidewalk. Ignoring the quick beating of his heart, he walks past Mr. Bouchard, into the shop. 

It’s a little disappointing, to say the least. The shop hasn’t changed, but Jon has. The darkness of the interior is less oppressive than Jon remembers, and the aura of danger that pervades Jon’s memories is simply not present. It’s a lot like Jon’s dream, actually. Calm. Quiet. A clock ticking steadily in the background. Jon would never call this place ‘safe,’ but it at least doesn’t feel actively dangerous.

Mr. Bouchard starts to lead the way deeper into the shop, but Jon stops. “I’d rather talk out here,” he says. Close to the door, where he can run if things go badly.

Mr. Bouchard smiles, and it isn’t unfriendly. “Jon.” His voice is gentle. “Do you really think you could flee out that door fast enough to escape?”

Jon freezes. “I—”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Jon. But you need to realize that you’re past the point of making choices. You decided to come here before opening, without telling anyone else where you were going. The consequence of that decision is that you are now fully at my mercy.”

Jon stares at Mr. Bouchard, desperately trying to keep control of himself. His eyes flit to the door, and as they do, Mr. Bouchard locks it behind him. Jon is trapped, and he did this to himself, and how could he possibly be that stupid?

“Come on,” Mr. Bouchard says lightly, leading the way into the twisting maze of shelves.

Jon follows Mr. Bouchard to the back of the store, through an unassuming door that looked like it led to a supply closet. In reality, it leads to what is clearly Mr. Bouchard’s home. From just inside the door, Jon can see a kitchen and a small sitting room. This is where Mr. Bouchard brings Jon. “Have a seat,” he says, and Jon obeys. He’s not sure if he has a choice, and he doesn’t want to test it. None of the chairs are particularly remarkable, so Jon just sits in the closest one. They looked like the kind of things that could be found at any furniture store. Default furniture, Jon finds himself thinking, and he doesn’t know why he finds that thought quite so unnerving.

“Would you like some tea?” Mr. Bouchard asks, as if this is a normal visit happening under normal circumstances. Jon is reminded suddenly, thickly of his dream, the normalcy and safety he had felt. That’s all worn off now.

“No,” Jon replies, staring at the floor, pulling his arms around himself. How could he be this stupid? Did he really think he could just come here and demand answers, and that Mr. Bouchard would just give them to him?

Mr. Bouchard sits down in the chair closest to Jon, all smug smiles and that purring, triumphant voice. He wanted Jon to come here. He enjoy Jon’s fear, his—desperate struggling. Jon shouldn’t ask him any questions. He shouldn’t have come here at all.

“How did you get into my dream?” Jon asks.

“What an interesting question,” Mr. Bouchard says. He says it nonchalantly, like he expected the question but is disappointed in Jon for asking it. Like the dream is only one piece of a puzzle that Jon should be able to see more of. 

Jon curls his hands into fists. “You were there, and the Night Visitor—wasn’t. I want to know how you did it.”

“Why? You think, if I can do it, why couldn’t you?”

_Yes._ “No, I just—”

“I see that hope in your eyes, Jon,” Mr. Bouchard says, leaning forward. “It’s adorable, really, how you keep pushing it back, telling yourself that you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. I bet you thought you were beyond hope. How many victims have you written down in your notebook by now?”

Jon stays silent, not meeting Mr. Bouchard’s eyes, looking anywhere else.  
  
Mr. Bouchard grabs Jon’s chin, and tilts his head back to meet his eyes. The touch is gentle, but Mr. Bouchard’s eyes are cold, and it’s all Jon can do not to jerk violently away from him.

“Sixty-three,” Jon answers, pulling tighter in on himself.

“And countless nightmares,” Mr. Bouchard says, pulling his hand away.

There is a moment of silence.

“I’m not going to share the how with you, Jon. Not today. But I will give you the why.”

“The what?”

“My reason for acting. My reason for bringing you here today. I know you’re interested in more than just how to control your nightmares. You want answers. About everything.”

“I—”

“I’d like you to be my apprentice,” Mr. Bouchard says.

“What?”

“You would help me around the shop, run various errands for me, help me with certain…tasks. In return, I would teach you about the…darker side of my work.”

There’s a glint in Mr. Bouchard’s eyes that Jon doesn’t like. Jon wants to yell at him, to tell him that there’s no way in hell he would ever, ever work for him. He wants to say that he doesn’t care about knowledge that much. He wants to spit in Mr. Bouchard’s face, but he doesn’t. Because—

“And, if you accept, I promise I will keep the Night Visitor away from your dreams.”

Jon thinks about the intense, burning pain of dream spider bites that somehow follow him into the waking world. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, trying to think, but whenever he closes his eyes he sees the spider and when he opens them it’s Mr. Bouchard. He’s so tired. It’s a trap, he knows it’s a trap, but he doesn’t see any other path forward. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll—I’ll be your apprentice.”

Mr. Bouchard leans back in his chair, his smug smile widening. "Excellent."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (cws for this chapter: passive suicidal ideation, references to major (and minor) character deaths, non-graphic violence)  
> ***  
> jonathan swims update: i don't really have any updates considering it's only been three days and he's a fish, but i posted some pictures on my tumblr if you want to see the boy:  
> https://suttttton.tumblr.com/post/623713703182893056/just-realized-i-havent-posted-any-pictures-of-my  
> (also as i write this, i'm sitting next to him and he is hard at work on his bubble nest. he's so talented i love him so much)
> 
> thanks for reading <3


	8. Apprenticeship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon starts his apprenticeship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (check the end notes for cws for this chapter!)
> 
> Hey guys! Welcome back! Thank you for coming to this update/reading this far. I'm really surprisingly happy with chapter, so I hope you guys enjoy it!
> 
> Thanks so much for your comments! You guys are so nice!!! I always, always, appreciate your enthusiasm, and I love hearing you all send Elias death threats. It's extremely motivating for me to keep going with this story. I'm going to try and reply to them going forward from this chapter because I really like interacting with you guys, and I want you to know that I love and cherish all of you.
> 
> Also, special thanks for my dear GloriousGarbage, who told me that she liked the first draft of this chapter, which gave me the motivation I needed to revise it into something that I //also// like.

The antique shop is dark and silent, the dark looming shapes of the shelves illuminated by only a soft bit of light from the front window. Jon stays still, swallowing back his fear as he listens and strains his eyes for any sign of movement. But the shop is empty. Nothing is lurking deeper inside. Nothing is stalking him.

Jon’s thoughts are clear as he lets himself breathe. This is a dream. It must be, because the last thing Jon remembers is laying in bed, wondering which monster would be coming for him. That’s one question answered, at least. Clearly Mr. Bouchard wants Jon to be here, to begin…his apprenticeship. Whatever that means.

Jon moves to the door, expecting it to be locked, but it opens easily. It doesn’t even creak. Jon stands on the threshold of the shop for a few moments, looking out at the street. It’s unfamiliar, and not just because of the darkness. In the real world, there is a coffee shop and a small grocery store across from Mr. Bouchard’s shop, along with several friendly-looking white houses. In this world, those familiar places are gone, replaced by dark, forbidding buildings that loom over the dark, narrow street. Jon looks out to see where the street ends, but it seems to stretch on forever.

There’s something out there. Jon can feel it watching him, waiting to see what decision he makes. Stay in the shop, where the only threat is Mr. Bouchard, or brave this unknown street? A strong feeling washes over Jon, urging him to stay in the shop. There’s nothing in the shop that will hurt him.

Jon closes the door behind him as he steps out onto the street. It’s dark, and he can feel unseen eyes on him. He needs to move, but when he tries to lift his legs, the street stretches and bends, keeping his feet firmly on the sidewalk. It’s very convenient, actually, and when he turns his head, the shop is far behind him.

The sidewalk brings him to one of the houses, and the wood of the front steps don’t seize onto his legs in the same way. His feet feel heavy as he lifts them onto each step, and he grabs onto the porch rail to help lift himself. When he finally gets the the top, he tries the door, and it opens. 

Jon’s mind freezes when he sees inside of the house, but that doesn’t stop his feet from propelling him inside. It’s Principal Smith’s house. This isn’t safe. He shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.

He turns to leave, to try his luck out on the endless street again, but the door has closed behind him. He fumbles with the knob, but it’s locked now, and when he pounds on the door, it doesn’t make any noise. He gives up and turns around, expecting a monster (a spider) to pounce on him.

There’s nothing but a dark hallway extending ahead of him.

Jon takes a step forward, and another, until the door is forgotten and the hallway is lit by nothing but an eerie green light that seems to creep out of nowhere.

“Well, this is unpleasant,” Mr. Bouchard says, coming up behind Jon.

Jon jumps and shrinks away, nearly pressing himself against the wall, as far from Mr. Bouchard as he can get. The wall is covered in cobwebs, a fact that Jon only realizes after he is thoroughly covered. 

“You realize that it isn’t easy to create a stable dreamscape? Especially not in _your_ head, which seems to fabricate nightmares at every opportunity.”

“Are you _lecturing_ me?” Jon asks, trying to look nonchalant as he desperately tried to wipe the cobwebs off.

“Of course,” Mr. Bouchard says, running his hand along the wall. He pulls off a handful of cobwebs and looks at them with interest. “That is rather the point of our arrangement.”

Jon lets out a dry laugh. “So you’re just going to come into my dreams whenever you want, then, and complain that they’re too scary for you? I thought you’d like that.”

Mr. Bouchard sighs. “No, Jon. I’ll admit that this—fascinates me. But I’m only here because it’s the best place for us to discuss the details of your apprenticeship.”

“My. _Dreams_.”

“Yes,” Mr. Bouchard said. “I worked quite hard to create the shop here. I wasn’t entirely pleased when you destroyed it, but luckily I found you before anything else did.”

This was absurd. Here was Mr. Bouchard, acting like Jon had come into this “apprenticeship” willingly, like it was totally, completely normal for Mr. Bouchard to take over Jon’s dreams for the purpose of discussing said apprenticeship. Acting like he’d saved Jon from falling into a deeper nightmare, when he was the one who’d made Jon’s entire life a nightmare.

“Anyway,” Mr. Bouchard said, wiping his hand on Jon’s shoulder. “My thought was that you could help me around my shop during the day, and then we can have your lessons in these dreams. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

“Does my opinion actually matter?”

“No, but I thought it would be polite to at least ask. Come to my shop tomorrow when you finish with school.”

“Right,” Jon said, wishing he could instead say, “Fuck you, I’m not coming anywhere near your shop.” But he doesn’t say that because, terrible as this dream is, at least the Night Visitor isn’t here. At least it isn’t happening to any of the others, and that could easily change.

Jon hates this. Mr. Bouchard is still talking, but Jon isn’t listening anymore. All he can think about is how much he’d rather be anywhere else, away from this man who has ruined so much--

There’s a door in the wall.

Mr. Bouchard doesn’t see it. It’s a small door. A Jon-size door, and when he sees it, Jon smiles a little bit. His dream came through for him. Ask-and-you-shall-receive.

Jon slips through the door quickly, before Mr. Bouchard can grab him, closing it, and keeping his hand on the doorknob. He can feel the pressure of Mr. Bouchard turning it, and he braces himself, focusing on keeping the door closed. After a moment, the knob rattles, and Jon realizes that the door has locked itself.

“Jon, what are you doing?” Mr. Bouchard says. “Open the door!” 

“What?” Jon says, raising his voice a little. “I can’t hear you.” Mr. Bouchard can definitely hear the smile in Jon’s words. Jon hopes it annoys him.

“Jon, you need to stay there,” Mr. Bouchard says. “And don’t—don’t turn around. Just stay focused on the door.”

“Yeah, no thanks.”

Jon intends to turn and run, find a place in this dream world where Mr. Bouchard won’t be able to find him. But as soon as he turns, all thoughts of Mr. Bouchard are forced out of his head.

It’s a small room, lit in blue, like a scene in a cartoon with moonlight streaming in from the window. But there are no windows in this room. There are just—webs. There are webs everywhere, and—corpses. Lots of corpses, all covered with webs. Oh, there’s Sasha. Tim. Martin.

At least they aren’t moving. It would be worse if they were moving, Jon thinks, right before he realizes that, oh, he’s on the floor now, and that’s right before he sees its glowing red eyes.

Jon clamps his hand over his mouth before he scream, he can’t scream, it’ll see him if screams. But it’s already seen him, ohf course it’s already seen him, it’s looking right at him, and now it’s moving. _It’s going to eat him._

The little door opens, and Mr. Bouchard ducks inside. Jon doesn’t wait to see his reaction to the spider, or the spider’s reaction to him. He just flees back through the door, slamming it behind him. He wants to run, but his breathing is fast and light, and he’s fairly certain he’ll pass out if he puts any more strain on himself, so he just leans against the far wall, watching the door, trying to breathe.

This is just a dream. Only a bad dream. Jon has had two thousand bad dreams, he can get through this one. Only—the Night Visitor isn’t here anymore. Which means—that scene, the webs, the bodies, oh god, his friends—that was all Jon.

His hands are shaking now. That’s probably bad. He feels a little dizzy, like he stood up too quickly and now his vision’s about to go black, so he slides down towards the floor.

He feels a tickling on the back of his neck, and then he remembers that this walls are covered in cobwebs, which means he’s now covered in cobwebs, and suddenly his breath is coming a lot faster. 

“Jon,” Mr. Bouchard says, and then he’s there, crouched above Jon, and his hands are on Jon’s shoulders, shaking him. “Jonathan!”

Jon wants to jerk away, to put space between himself and this monster. This is a dream, but it feels so much more real than any of his dreams before. His thoughts aren’t scripted here, they’re just terrified and _too much_ and he can’t breathe and he knows he’s having a panic attack, and he knows that this is the worst possible time for it, and now he’s crying and he needs to calm down, but he—

Jon jerks awake in the familiar darkness of his bedroom. For a few moments, he simply lays there, letting out shaky breaths. He counts himself through breathing exercises. Inhale four seconds, hold four seconds, exhale four seconds. 

When he can breathe again, he lets himself think of Mr. Bouchard, and very nearly sends himself into another panic attack. He stays focused on his breathing. _I can’t do this_ , he thinks. He’s not brave enough to face down evil every day. Not so directly. It’ll tear him apart.

But he doesn’t have much of a choice. Not when Mr. Bouchard has access to his sleep. To anyone’s sleep, actually, if he can control the Night Visitor. Mr. Bouchard could plague Sasha and Tim and Martin with the same kind of nightmares that have been Jon’s curse for four years. He could do it easily, as soon as Jon stepped out of line.

A tear slips down Jon’s cheek, and he wipes it away. He rolls over and cries until he once again falls asleep.

The rest of the night is dreamless.

***

The next day, Sasha invites them all over after school to make smoothies together. “Smoothies” will inevitably turn into “watch TV together” which will turn into “would you boys like to stay for dinner?” which will turn into “shit, we forgot to finish our homework assignments” which will turn into Tim, Jon, and Martin spending the night curled up across the living room furniture.

It would, anyway, if Jon didn’t have to say, “I can’t, actually.”

Which, of course, leads to questions. “Why not? What are you up to today?”

Jon should have thought of a convincing lie before this moment. “I, uh, got a job.”

Sure enough, there are more questions, as well as a rather exasperated exclamation from Tim, who has been more-or-less looking for a job for the better part of three months. “Where? Who hired you?”

Jon doesn’t have a good answer for that, so he pretends not have heard. It’s not terribly unbelievable. The cafeteria is pretty loud, after all.

His friends are persistent, though. “Jon? Where are you working?”

Jon considers just getting up and walking away from their lunch table. The others would follow him, of course, but maybe Jon could hide? And then he’d just—avoid them until whatever this situation was with Mr. Bouchard was resolved.

“…Jon?” They’re still asking, and now all three of them are looking at him like they expect him to announce he only has three months to live.

To be fair, he kind of is announcing something like that.

“…The antique shop,” Jon answers quietly, ducking his head to avoid their reactions.

“ _What?_ ” Tim shouts, loud enough that people look over at them from several tables away. A few of the teachers look like they might be about to head over to investigate. Jon ducks his head even lower.

“Jon, you can’t actually be working with Mr. Bouchard,” Sasha says. “That’s…crazy.”

“Don’t you remember what happened with the spider?” Tim asks.

Jon flinches. Sixthy-three descriptions. “Yes,” he replies. His voice is quiet, but hard. He doesn’t owe them an explanation. It’s better for them that they don’t know, that they never know. It’s safer.

“Is he mind-controlling you?” Tim asks, curving his head down to look into Jon’s eyes. Jon looks away with a heavy sigh.

“Tim, stop,” Sasha says.

“What is it, though, Jon?” Martin asks. “Is he—is it—”

The questions aren’t going to stop. Jon knows that. _He_ wouldn’t stop asking, if one of them had shown up announcing that they were planning to work for Mr. Bouchard. He would assume the worst, and he would want to know every detail of whatever situation Mr. Bouchard had wound them up in.

The knowledge doesn’t stop Jon feeling angry, and it certainly doesn’t stop him feeling terrified. “Maybe you all should just mind your own business and not worry so much about me,” Jon says, standing up and leaving their table. They don’t follow.

***

Martin gets up to go after Jon, but Tim grabs his wrist. “Don’t bother,” Tim says. “He wants to be alone.”

“But he’s—That was—” Martin stops, seeing his own confusion and near-desperation reflected in Tim and Sasha’s expressions. They’re all worried about Jon. More than worried, that’s much too small a word for the yawning sense of fear opening in all of them.

“I know,” Tim says, releasing Martin’s hand as he sits back down.

“Mr. Bouchard has to be—doing something to him, right?” Sasha says. “There’s no way he would go there otherwise.”

They look at each other, a strange tension filling the air. _They know_ , Martin thinks suddenly, and what was once a shallow suspicion becomes a sinking certainty. “Have either of you—No.” This isn’t the right way for this to go. This is a confession, not an interrogation. Something is very wrong with Jon, and they need to work together to make it right. Martin takes a deep breath. “I have an idea what happened.”

They both look at him, waiting.

“I don’t know any of the details, but… I made a deal with Mr. Bouchard,” Martin explains. “I asked him to help Jon, and—he said that he would. And it was weird because he wouldn’t accept payment from me. He said he would do it as a favor, but every other time, he asked for a story in return.”

Sasha closes her eyes. Tim looks away. Martin has a moment of panic, thinking that this might be his last meal with his friends, that they might be about to storm off after berating him for how stupid he is.

“That’s gotta be it,” Sasha says opening her eyes. “Something to do with it, anyways. Did he—Did you ask what was wrong with Jon?”

“I don’t think he would have told me,” Martin replies. “He basically confirmed that it was more supernatural than ordinary trauma, though, so…That’s something. And he _did_ say he would help.”

“Jon doesn’t seem any better,” Tim says, watching the door where Jon left.

Jon is better, though, Martin thinks. Not completely, no—He still looks like he’s holding the weight of the entire world across his shoulders, but he’s more energetic now. His reactions are quicker. He doesn’t look quite so exhausted all the time. Martin closes his eyes. None of that is worth Jon losing himself to Mr. Bouchard. “I’m sorry,” Martin said. “It was dumb. I never should have gone there. I knew, but I still—”

Sasha hushes him, placing a hand over his. “It’s okay, Martin,” she says. Her voice is soft. “I made deals with him too.”

Tim leans on the table, chin resting on his hand. “Me too,” he says.

Martin closes his eyes again, leaning into their touches. “Jon probably has too, I imagine,” he says, with a small smile.

“Probably,” Tim says. 

“We’re going to help him, right?” Martin asks.

Tim and Sasha nod. “Always.”

*** 

Jon avoids his friends for the rest of the day, and when school ends, he walks to Mr. Bouchard’s shop on his own. He wishes he had company, anything to make him feel less like he was walking into his own execution.

It would be fine. Mr. Bouchard obviously had some deeper, more sinister plan than just killing him. Jon just had to stay sharp, and not fall into his trap.

He tried not to think of how he’d walked right into every step of Mr. Bouchard’s plan up to this point.

When he gets to Mr. Bouchard’s shop twenty minutes later, Sasha, Tim, and Martin are gathered in front of it.

“What are you doing here?” Jon asks, the anxiety in his stomach spiking into actual fear. His friends couldn’t be around Mr. Bouchard. They _couldn’t_.

“C’mon, Jon,” Tim said, slinging his arm around Jon’s shoulder. “We’re not letting you walk into the lion’s den on your own.”

Jon shrugged him off. “You all need to leave. You can’t be here.”

To his dismay, none of them made the slightest move like they planned to leave. He heard the familiar sound of that heavy wooden door creaking open behind him, and he felt claws of desperation sink deep into him. He had to get his friends out of here.

“Hello, Jon,” Mr. Bouchard says, something that could almost be amusement in his voice. “This is a much larger company than I was expecting.”

“They were just leaving,” Jon says quickly.

“Hardly,” Sasha says. “Don’t mind us, Mr. Bouchard. We’re just here to observe.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. “I told them not to come, but they—”

Mr. Bouchard cuts Jon off with a wave of his hand. “It’s understandable. They’re worried. Given the circumstances, I think that’s more than fair. Of course, I’m afraid I can’t allow a gaggle of teenagers to loiter in my shop all afternoon.”

“We’re not leaving Jon alone,” Tim says, crossing his arms.

“I’m not asking you to,” Mr. Bouchard says, as if he’s talking to a group of six year olds. “One of you may stay to keep Jon company. They other two, I must ask to move along. Please.”

The three share a look that has a degree of familiarity to it that makes Jon’s heart twist. They’re used to making decisions like this, without him. Jon realizes suddenly that they won’t listen to him. Mr. Bouchard has given them permission, and they’re going to take it, whether or not Jon wants them to.

“I’ll stay,” Tim says. 

***

Sitting around the shop while Jon works is…underwhelming, to be honest, although it makes sense that Mr. Bouchard would wait until Jon no longer has hypervigilant friends looking out for him to unleash his sinister plan. Joke’s on him. The three of them are _never_ going to let their guard down when it comes to Jon.

Today, instead of cursing or hypnotizing them or whatever, Mr. Bouchard just hands Jon a broom and instructs him to sweep around the shop. It’s disappointingly normal, and Tim finds himself a little bored, perched on a stool at the front of the shop, watching Mr. Bouchard file his taxes or something.

“So what’s your grand, evil plan?” Tim asks, propping his chin on one hand.

Mr. Bouchard laughs. “I assure you, Mr. Stoker, there is no grand evil plan.”

“And I assure you, Mr. Bouchard, I’m not stupid. I know you hired Jon for something sinister.”

“Naturally,” Mr. Bouchard says. “Now that he works for me, I can make _him_ deal with my rudest customers, and I’ll no longer have to.”

Tim laughs at that, in spite of himself. He can’t quite forgive himself for the slip, so he slides off the stool and wanders deeper into the shop to find Jon.

“This place is kind of spooky, isn’t it?” he says, coming up behind Jon.

Jon yelps, nearly dropping his broom. “Yes, if you sneak up on me like that!”

Tim puts his hands on Jon’s shoulders. “Jonny Boy, I swear to you, there was no sneaking. It’s not my fault you were zoned out.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jon mutters, but he doesn’t pull away from the touch, which Tim takes as a win. 

He deepens the contact, sliding his arms over Jon’s shoulders and leaning fully into him. “You know we’re all really worried about you, right?” he asks.

Jon doesn’t say anything, just nods.

“Good,” Tim says. He wraps his arms around Jon and squeezes. “We’re not letting you deal with this on your own.”

Jon is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “Tim, I can’t—I don’t have an answer for you as to why I’ve accepted this job.”

“That’s okay,” Tim says. “We don’t need to know why to make sure you get through it without falling into any traps.”

Jon smiles then, and it’s the first time in months, maybe even years, that Tim has seen such a genuine smile. “Thanks,” Jon says, and his voice sounds a little thick, so Tim gives him another squeeze, which makes him laugh.

“Please get off of me,” Jon says.

Tim does, and begins picking up various pieces of merchandise from the shelves and commenting on them, trying to make Jon laugh some more. Jon does, and while he’s still scared of putting his friends in danger and playing directly into Mr. Bouchard’s plan, he has the distinct feeling that nothing is as scary as it used to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (cws for this chapter: nightmare spiders, panic attacks)  
> ***  
> Jonathan Swims Update: My boy has lots of plants in his tank, and he loves them. (Unless they get uprooted from the gravel and start floating around the tank. He does NOT like that.) They all grow in narrow clusters of stems, and he likes swimming through the little spaces between the stems. He also likes DESTROYING the leaves of every single plant, especially if the stem is long enough that the leaves float at the top of the water line. Why does he do this? What is his problem? I have no idea. Initially, it worried me, but now I kind of just think he's a bastard.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @suttttton if you want to come chat!
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	9. trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explanations are given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all your lovely comments!! they give me the will to live and to continue writing
> 
> <3<3<3

  
The next time Jon opens his eyes in the antique shop, it feels safe. The kind of comfortable place where Jon could easily curl up and forget himself for hours. It’s like the first dream Mr. Bouchard sent him, except that Jon is much more lucid now, much more aware of the discrepancies between this feeling and the reality of the shop.

Once again, they are seated in the blue chairs. Mr. Bouchard is stirring a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. A mug for Jon rests on the table between them.

Mr. Bouchard’s presence is comforting, and Jon feels that he can breathe a little easier with him in the room. He hates it, tries to shake the feeling off, to replace it with the distrustful distance that he _needs_ if he’s going to get through this. The tangle of anxiety doesn’t sit easily in Jon’s stomach, and it’s all he can do to not release it and just relax into this peaceful world.

Mr. Bouchard takes a sip of his tea and meets Jon’s eyes. “Welcome back,” he says.

“What are you doing?” Jon asks. “Why can’t I feel scared?”

Mr. Bouchard sets his mug on the table and regards Jon with that smug smile. “After last week’s…episode, I thought it would be useful to take certain precautions. “I didn’t want to risk you running off. It isn’t safe.”

“Oh, but it’s safe here?”

“Yes,” Mr. Bouchard says, in a tone that dared Jon to try and argue the point.

Jon doesn’t argue. In truth, he isn’t really interested in seeing what other horrors his brain might offer him, left to its own devices. Last week’s revelations were plenty. “I’m not going to run,” Jon says. “But I’m not going to work with you until you stop…this. I don’t trust you, and you messing with my emotions is hardly going to change that.”

“I’m interested to hear exactly what leverage you think you have to make demands of me,” Mr. Bouchard says, tilting his head to the side.

“I could leave,” Jon says. “Try my luck out there.”

“Could you?” Mr. Bouchard asks, and his tone feels like a challenge.

Jon retreats from it. “I could,” he replies quietly, shrinking away from it. He doesn’t want to leave, not really, but Mr. Bouchard is looking at him like a cat circling its prey. There’s a trap here, one that Mr. Bouchard is clearly waiting for Jon to stumble right into. Jon isn’t worried about it, but he should be, he _will_ be.

Mr. Bouchard just hums, continuing to watch Jon over his tea. 

Screw this. If it weren’t for the warmth and comfort Mr. Bouchard is throwing on him against his will, Jon probably would have left much sooner than this. Staying here is clearly a bad idea.

Except Jon can’t move. He isn’t frozen in place, exactly. If he wants to reach for his tea, he can do that. Fidgeting is open to him. But if his thoughts start to turn towards fleeing, towards action, they just—stop.

Jon isn’t scared. He’s trapped, and part of him wants to just sink into it.

“What’s the point of taking my fear if you’re going to trap me here anyway?”

“To be completely honest with you, Jon, I wasn’t certain I would be able to trap you here. I was very impressed with your performance last night. Your actions with the door were extremely ill-advised, but it’s very promising that you managed to manipulate the door to lock itself twice. Even more impressive that you did in direct opposition to me.”

Jon fights the part of himself that wants to uncurl under the praise. It’s difficult, given that he only has the knowledge that Mr. Bouchard couldn’t be trusted, not the fear itself. 

“I also meant it as a kindness to you. I can’t imagine you’d be this willing to talk to me under normal circumstances. Especially after learning that I’ve trapped you here.”

This is Jon’s dream, right? Maybe he can free himself, or—get his fear back. He thinks about the door, tries to just—will himself outside. But without fear to spur him on, it doesn’t feel urgent enough. He’s still trapped.

“Hm,” Mr. Bouchard says. “You’re weaker this way. Interesting. Another reason I think we should keep things the way they are now.”

“I have a question,” Jon says. “You’ve gotten this power from the Night Visitor, right?”

“Correct,” Mr. Bouchard says.

“So, if you can control it,” Jon continues, ”Why did you tell me you couldn’t do anything about the Spider?” It’s a question that he’s wanted to ask, angry and hurt. But neither of those emotions are with him now, so the question just comes out hollow. A mild curiosity.

Mr. Bouchard leans back in his chair, considering. “This gets into territory that I’m not sure you’re ready to know.”

“Tell me,” Jon says.

Mr. Bouchard sighs. “To answer your accusation, it was not a lie when I told you I could do nothing against the spider. That was, and continues to be, the truth. The story of the Night Visitor was given to me as part of a trade. Therefore, I have control over it. The spider was not, therefore I can do nothing to control him.”

It’s an answer that only raises more question, and Jon is silent for a moment, thinking of what to ask next. “Do _I_ have control over the spider?”

“Clearly not,” Mr. Bouchard says dryly.

“No, but—could I?”

Mr. Bouchard sighs. “Always, circling around the spider problem. Four years and you’ve thought of little else.”

“You’re the one that gave me the book,” Jon says. “Seems kind of irresponsible.”

“I expected that you would give the story to me. When you didn’t, I didn’t honestly expect you’d be able to manifest something quite so…lethal.”

“Then why not teach me how to control it back then, instead of claiming you couldn’t do anything and letting it kill dozens of people?”

“Because you were, and continue to be, a child.” Mr. Bouchard says. “I knew that the moment I showed you the truth of the book, you would run off to fight the monster and get yourself killed. And you still would, but at least now, I have a plan to teach you these things so that by the time you learn how, you might survive it.”

“No,” Jon says. “No. You aren’t going to pretend that you were secretly looking out for me all this time. I’m not stupid. You did this because you wanted to watch us all flail around and, and suffer.” It’s true. Jon knows it true, even though it doesn’t feel true. He spits the words, trying to summon an anger that he doesn’t feel. It would be frustrating, if Jon could feel frustration.

Mr. Bouchard hums. “Jon. If I gave you your fear back, right now, what would you do with it?”

“I’d kill you,” Jon says.

“Hm,” Mr. Bouchard answers, and then, slowly, Jon feels the familiar fear seep back into him. He grabs it, holds it close, like it’s something precious. He gasps under the weight of it, letting it nearly bowl him over.

He looks back at Mr Bouchard, who is looking at him with that smile.

Jon thinks of escape, and then he’s gone.

The rest of the dream is unpleasant and uncontrolled, but it’s his own.

***

Sasha glares at Mr. Bouchard from across the shop. She’s seated at a small table, her literature textbook open on her lap, but she isn’t even pretending to pay attention to her homework. 

“Can I help you, Ms. James,” Mr. Bouchard says with a small sigh.

Next to her, Sasha sees Jon shake his head slightly. He’s rearranging a collection of tiny ceramic figurines on their shelf, and he pauses to flash Sasha a warning look.

She ignores it. “Do you have any other evil items around here?” she asks.

Jon is glaring at her now. Good. If he wasn’t going to tell them anything, she would get her own answers.

“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Bouchard replies. “The book is the only supernatural artifact I’ve ever held in my possession.”

“Do others exist? Have you seen any?”

“Yes,” Mr. Bouchard says. “Other books, of course, although with quite different effects on their users. A knife that inspired anyone who held it to violence. A map of the stars that could make a person disappear if they gazed at it too deeply. Once, at a traveling carnival, I even saw a carousel that would add or detract years from its rider’s age with every revolution.”

“What carnival?” Sasha asks.

“Oh, this was 1932 or ‘33. I’m sure it’s long-defunct by now. Who knows where the carousel ended up.”

Mr. Bouchard smiles, as if he was joking, but Sasha isn’t sure. She doesn’t think people can live past 100 and look half that age, but Mr. Bouchard doesn’t seem purely human. She starts to ask, but Mr. Bouchard interrupts.

“Getting back to your original question, yes, there are others. But I am only fortunate enough to have come into possession of the one book. And not even that, now,” he says, smiling over at Jon.

“How did you get the book?”

“The same way anyone does. It found me.”

“Like it ‘found’ us?” Sasha says. Her voice had been sharp before, but now it tilted into pure hostility.

Mr. Bouchard meets her eyes for a long moment, but Sasha doesn’t back down. “No,” he says finally.

Sasha changes direction. “How does the book work?” In the corner of her eye, she sees Jon jerk at the question. As if it isn’t an entirely reasonable thing to ask.

Mr. Bouchard hums softly, filling in some numbers in his ledgers. “How do you think it works?”

“Sasha,” Jon says softly, his voice tight.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s stories, isn’t it? You write down a story, the book makes it real.” She pauses. A sample size of one isn’t really enough data to make any guesses, but Sasha still has her theories. “Except—I think the stories have to be bad. It’s an evil book, after all.”

“Close enough,” Mr. Bouchard says. “Although I personally don’t think drawing a moral distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ is particularly helpful here.” He taps his pen a few times, then looks back down. “Really, it’s a matter of fear.”

“What does that mean?” Sasha asks. Jon is looking up now too, just as focused on Mr. Bouchard’s words as Sasha.

“The book feeds on fear, and uses that energy to manifest whatever gets written in its pages. You wrote down a story about a spider monster that scared you, so the book created the spider monster. It isn’t enough for the story to be bad—it has to scare you for the book to work.”

“So…if we hadn’t been afraid of the Spider, he wouldn’t have come to life?”

“Yes,” Mr. Bouchard nods.

Sasha sits back, chewing on her lip. “Why did _you_ never use the book?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Mr. Bouchard says.

It was the kind of boast that Sasha was used to hearing from boys with something to prove. But Mr. Bouchard doesn’t say it like a boast. He says it like a fact, a simple reality of his existence. Deep in the shop, something rustles, and beside her Sasha sees Jon flinch. Mr. Bouchard doesn’t move, doesn’t even look toward the sound.

Sasha believes him. Mr. Bouchard has no fear, at least not in the human sense.

She shivers, and turns her attention back to her homework, already formulating more questions for him.

***

“Sasha, you can’t just—ask questions like that,” Jon says as soon as they’re a safe distance away from the shop.

“Why not? We should be investigating this stuff! Maybe we’ll figure out a way to stop the Spider.”

“If Mr. Bouchard doesn’t have a way to control the Spider, what makes you think we could?” Jon sounded tired, like this was an argument he’d had dozens of times before.

“I’m not convinced he’s telling the truth about that,” Sasha says. “I’m not convinced he’s telling the truth about _anything_ , honestly. He’s evil, remember?”

“Obviously,” Jon says. “That’s why you need to be more careful. He could easily pull you deeper into this, and—”

“Oh, right, and you think you’re the only one who can handle being deep in this?” Sasha keeps her voice light, but behind her words is a real anger.

“No, but—” He inhales sharply. “You shouldn’t be more involved than you need to be.”

“Whatever,” Sasha says, striding ahead of him.

When they reach the treehouse, Sasha gets to the ladder ahead of him. “Important news, guys,” Sasha says, climbing into the treehouse. “We learned some very interesting things about the book from Mr. Bouchard today.” Tim and Martin are there already, waiting to make sure the two of them survived the afternoon.

“Sasha—” Jon starts.

“What? You don’t think they need to know this?”

Jon sighs and doesn’t answer. He sits down on the floor, gesturing for Sasha to go ahead.

When Sasha finishes her explanation, Martin and Tim are silent for a moment.

“So…the book only works if the person who writes down the story is afraid of it?” Martin asks.

Sasha nods. “Well, that’s what Mr. Bouchard said, anyway. He might have been lying, but I don’t know what the point would be.”

“Maybe to give us a false sense of security,” Tim says. “Make us think he can’t use the book, that he isn’t a danger.”

“He can’t use the book, though,” Jon says. “I mean, he had it for years before he gave it to us. If he could use it, why didn’t he do it then?”

“He said he wasn’t afraid of anything,” Sasha says. “That sounds like a lie, or an exaggeration, but if it’s true that he doesn’t feel fear—”

“It’s true,” Jon mutters, not looking at any of them. “So he can’t use the book. He’s—Whatever his plan is, it must involve something else.”

“But—” Martin starts. If Mr. Bouchard couldn’t use the book himself, what was the point of taking stories from them? Before he finishes the question, the implications of Jon’s words sink in. Jon _doesn’t know about the stories_. Unlike the rest of them, he’d never made any deals with Mr. Bouchard. Martin meets eyes with Tim and Sasha, and the secret they hold between them seems almost tangible. They need to talk about it, to discuss the best way to share their betrayals with Jon. 

“Martin?” Jon says.

“Never mind,” Martin says, shaking his head, breaking the secret moment.

***

“You realize that fleeing as soon I return your fear is not a good way to convince me you’ve earned that privilege, right?” Mr. Bouchard says.

Jon ignores the question. “I don’t want my friends to be part of this,” he says.

“I’m not sure they’re going to give you a choice,” Mr. Bouchard says wryly.

“Why let them hang around the shop at all?”

“Given their personalities, they’re far more likely to cause problems if I banned them outright. Besides, their presence ensures that you remember the stakes of our deal.”

“I remember that fine,” Jon says. “You don’t have to drag them in deeper just because they ask you questions.”

“You’d like me to keep your friends ignorant?”

It sounds horrible put like that. Jon nods. “Don’t involve them more than they have to be.”

“Fine,” Mr. Bouchard says. “It doesn’t matter to me. In any case, we have much more important matters to discuss. I hope you’ll forgive that I’ve once again trapped you here.”

“I noticed.”

Mr. Bouchard raised his hands at Jon’s tone. “Apologies, but your cooperation up to this point hasn’t been encouraging.”

It was the kind of comment that should have sent a flare of anger through Jon’s stomach, but it didn’t come. “Why did I lose control of everything after I left last night? The first time, I was able to control things outside of the shop.”

“Only when I was with you, if you’ll remember,” Mr. Bouchard answers. “And even then, very little. Your subconscious mind is a scarier place than most.”

Jon rolls his eyes.

“When I’m with you, I give you access to lucidity the same way I give you peace.”

“No,” Jon says quickly. “Do not call it that. Stealing my fear is not the same as ‘giving me peace’.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No!”

“As you like,” Mr. Bouchard says. “I’d like you to make some tea.”

Jon blinks. “What?”

“You’ll notice that we have no tea.” Mr. Bouchard gestures to the empty table in front of them. “I’d like you to make some appear.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. “What?”

Mr. Bouchard shakes his head. “It isn’t that difficult. This is a dream. Your dream. It is entirely within your power to make tea appear. I’d like you to do it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s easy,” Mr. Bouchard says. “And it’s a safe enough way to teach you the basic principle.”

“Okay, but—what’s the point? Why do you want me to learn how to—make tea appear in my dreams?” Jon is nearly laughing now.

Mr. Bouchard doesn’t look amused. “Jon, I’m trying to train you to become the book’s next master. The book _isn’t_ evil, as you kids put it. It’s a powerful artifact that requires a highly trained mind to use correctly, and I think that could be you.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” Jon says.

“I think you’re an extremely intelligent boy, which is why I hope you’ll listen to me. Jon, there are dark forces at play in the world, forces that make your Spider look like nothing more than a trifle. The book was created to keep those forces at bay, but without a master to control the book, I’m afraid things are getting rather out of hand. I’d hoped to wait until you were older, but—” Mr. Bouchard smiles thinly. “I don’t think we have that kind of time to prepare.”

Jon just stares at him for a long moment. “No,” he says finally. “ _No_. I don’t believe you. You’ve done nothing but hurt me and my friends, and—No.”

“I’m not asking you to believe me,” Mr. Bouchard says, leaning back in his chair. “I’m only asking that you cooperate with me. If you need more motivation, well—your friends are a convenient option.”

At that, Jon’s stomach should twist with anger and guilt and fear and frustration, emotions that he can throw at Mr. Bouchard, snapping the cord keeping him obediently in place and letting him escape.

None of that happens. Jon continues sitting calmly. “What do I do?” he asks, his voice soft and defeated.

Mr. Bouchard smiles. “It’s simply a matter of focus, and of trust. Simply believe that tea is here, and it will be.”

Jon nods, and turns his attention to the empty table in front of him. Nothing happens.

***

Other than a few more arguments, nothing continues to happen until Jon wakes up, feeling more exhausted than when he went to sleep. It’s nothing new, but after several nights of actually feeling rested, it’s harder than normal to drag himself through the day. For the eight hundredth time since they’d become friends, Martin has to poke him awake during math class, and he spends most of the day staring at Jon with that concerned look on his face.

“I’m fine, Martin. I just didn’t sleep well,” Jon insists when Martin corners him after class, instantly regretting the bite in his tone.

But Martin doesn’t shrink beneath it. “Nightmares?” he asks, and there’s a searching note in his voice that once again reminds Jon how smart Martin really is.

“No,” Jon says, looking away from Martin to dig a few papers out of his locker. Luckily, his next class is on the other side of campus, so he a real excuse to exit the conversation and hurry off.

Jon’s certain that Martin is going to be the one to volunteer to stay with him at the shop, and the thought fills him with dread. If any of his friends should stay away from Mr. Bouchard, it’s Martin.

The worry is misplaced, though, because Sasha steps up before Martin can say anything. For a moment, Jon lets himself relax—as least as much as he can relax, these days.

Immediately, the worry comes back, as Sasha marches up to Mr. Bouchard’s desk and says. “I have some more questions for you about the book. Why was it made? And by who? And how do you know how it works if you can’t use it?”

Mr. Bouchard smiles thinly, his eyes floating calmly over to Jon before he says, “Ms. James, have you considered that there might be more productive outlets for your investigative tendencies?”

“No,” Sasha says flatly. “Answer the questions.”

Mr. Bouchard steeples his fingers. “I’m afraid not,” he says, tipping his hands towards her.

“What?”

“I won’t answer your questions,” he says.

“But yesterday, you—” Sasha stops suddenly and turns around. Jon ducks behind a shelf, but not before Sasha’s eyes lock on him, burning furiously.

The rest of the afternoon passes awkwardly, Sasha silently stewing over her homework and looking up to glare at Jon whenever he comes into her line of sight.

Upon leaving the shop, they don’t make it three steps down the sidewalk before she turns on him. “Did you _actually_ tell Mr. Bouchard not to answer my questions?”

Jon doesn’t look at her. “No,” he says.

“Unbelievable,” Sasha says. “You really do think you’re the only one who deserves to know what’s going on.”

“No!” Jon says. “I-I just-I-You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course I don’t understand! You’re not telling me anything!”

Jon doesn’t have a response to that. “I’m sorry,” he manages, but she just shakes her head.

“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t still be hiding things from us,” she says.

She’s right. Jon isn’t sorry, not really. Hiding things from the others is _necessary_ , to protect them from whatever nonsense Mr. Bouchard is trying to pull. 

But that doesn’t mean the guilt doesn’t stick in Jon’s throat. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel completely adrift when Sasha storms off, leaving him exhausted and alone with a level of terror that suddenly feels very heavy to carry on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jonathan Swims update: the boy has a new home! it's a little more betta-friendly than the last tank he was in, which was a tall cylinder thing i inherited from one of my dad's coworkers. the new tank is a normal rectangle with a very bright light and wayyyyy more room for plants for the boy to chew up.
> 
> @suttttton on tumblr if you want to come say hi!
> 
> thanks for reading!!


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